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Arnold Neumaier
Coherent Quantum Physics
Texts and Monographs in
Theoretical Physics

|
Edited by
Michael Efroimsky, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Leonard Gamberg, Reading, Pennsylvania, USA
Arnold Neumaier

Coherent Quantum
Physics

|
A Reinterpretation of the Tradition
Mathematics Subject Classification 2010
Primary: 81P15, 81R30, 46E22; Secondary: 17B81, 81T99

Author
Prof. Dr. Arnold Neumaier
Universität Wien
Fakultåt für Mathematik
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1
1090 Wien
Austria
[email protected]

ISBN 978-3-11-066729-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-066738-7
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-066736-3
ISSN 2627-3934

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947573

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Cover image: Guy N Harris / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Typesetting: VTeX UAB, Lithuania
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck

www.degruyter.com
|
To Maria,
in honor of the Creator of our magnificent universe
Download Date | 10/31/19 1:08 PM
Preface
In a statistical description of nature only expectation values or correlations are observable.
Christof Wetterich, 1997 [299, p. 2678]

One is almost tempted to assert that the usual interpretation in terms of sharp eigenvalues is
‘wrong’, because it cannot be consistently maintained, while the interpretation in terms of expec-
tation values is ‘right’, because it can be consistently maintained.
John Klauder, 1997 [160, p. 6]

What has become known as the quantum measurement problem […] encapsulates many of the fun-
damental conceptual difficulties that have to this date prevented us from arriving at a commonly
agreed-upon understanding of the physical meaning of the formalism of quantum mechanics and
of how this formalism relates to the perceived world around us.
Maximilian Schlosshauer, 2007 [265, p. VIII]

This book introduces mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers to a new, coher-

ent approach to theory and interpretation of quantum physics (including quantum
mechanics, quantum statistical mechanics, quantum field theory, and their applica-
tions), in which classical and quantum thinking live peacefully side by side and jointly
fertilize the intuition.
An interpretation of quantum mechanics relates its formalism to the actual in-
formal practice of using quantum mechanics in our scientific culture. An impeccable
interpretation must show that there is a fully consistent relation between theory and
practice. The interpretation may use concepts familiar from our culture to explain the
working of quantum physics in practice to everyone’s satisfaction.
What are the shortcomings of the current approaches? The minimal statistical
interpretation predicts the statistics of outcomes of experiments. It is silent about the
interpretation of quantum mechanics in the absence of measurements, and therefore
about the interpretation of quantum physics applied to the far past of the universe, be-
fore experiments were possible. This constitutes a serious gap—the interpretation is
consistent, but incomplete (as it should be for a “minimal” interpretation). The Copen-
hagen interpretation, which claims that nothing can be asserted in the absence of a
measurement, is also consistent. But this sounds like the concept that a tree fallen
in the wood has fallen only after someone has seen it. This is one of the reasons why
quantum mechanics comes across as somewhat strange. In a many-world interpreta-
tion, the world splits and splits, completely unnoticed by us, into all possible futures.
This is science fiction by conception. The other known interpretations are either vari-
ations of the above or require additional, in principle, unobservable, and hence fic-
tional stuff. As a result, much of quantum physics appears to the general public as a
kind of quantum magic.
Why do physicists live with this? A noteworthy aspect of the standard inter-
pretations is that the state vector cannot represent the whole universe, since it must

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110667387-201
VIII | Preface

exclude an observer or measuring device that determines when a measurement has

occurred. This is the so-called Heisenberg cut between the quantum and the classical
world. To date, this has not been a problem in making successful experimental predic-
tions, so practitioners are often satisfied with the quantum formalism in a standard in-
terpretation. Tradition builds the quantum edifice on a time-honored foundation that
accounts for essentially all experimental facts. But it takes a “shut-up-and-calculate”
attitude towards the interpretation of the foundations. The traditional presentation of
quantum physics is clearly adequate for prediction, but seems not to be suitable for
an adequate understanding.
A second reason is that a number of popular “quantum magicians”, very experi-
enced quantum physics practitioners specializing in quantum optics, like to give their
audience the impression that important parts of quantum mechanics are weird. And
the general public loves it! Part of the magicians’ art consists of remaining silent about
the true reasons why things work rationally, since then the weirdness is gone, and with
it the entertainment value.
Does quantum mechanics have to be weird? It sells much better to the general
public if it is presented that way, and there is a long history of proceeding like this. But
it is an obstacle for everyone who wants to truly understand quantum mechanics, and
to physics students, who have to unlearn what they were told as laypersons. When
presented in the right way, quantum mechanics is not at all weird, but very close to
classical mechanics. Much of the weirdness comes from forcing quantum mechanics
into the straightjacket of a particle picture. The particle picture breaks down com-
pletely in the subatomic domain, as witnessed by the many weird things that result
from such a view.
Coherent quantum physics removes the radical split between classical mechanics
and quantum mechanics. This book demonstrates that at any level of detail, Nature
can be rationally and objectively understood just by interpreting the traditional, well-
established mathematics of quantum physics in an appropriate way. This requires a
reinterpretation of the tradition. The interpretation featured in this book succeeds
without any change in the theory, and without introducing new counterintuitive fea-
tures or new theoretical concepts. The resulting quantum features then are only those
familiar from everyday life.
Nature, as we perceive it with our eyes, consists of images—in mathematical terms
2-dimensional fields, with properties (colors) at each point. Our brains interpret im-
ages as scenes in a, strictly speaking, not directly perceived 3-dimensional world of
objects. The same object seems larger or smaller depending on its distance from us,
with a shape that is deduced from images showing the object from different perspec-
tives. All our observations are indirect: We perceive images and other sensory informa-
tion and infer the true (theoretical, reproducible, invariant) properties of the objects
around us.
From the experience of the multitude of such sensory perceptions of many people,
our culture created a network of concepts and relations now called science, and in
 Preface | IX

particular physics. Space has become 3-dimensional, represented at each particular

time by 3-dimensional fields that tell the spatial properties of the materials present
at each point in space. Their boundaries delineate the objects, some sharply, others—
such as clouds—only in a fuzzy way.
Space thus becomes equipped with many properties. There are local properties,
such as temperature, colors, hardness, stress, and chemical composition. In fluids
there are properties like salt concentration, but also pressure, streaming velocity, et
cetera. Each of these gives rise to a field that specifies how these properties vary with
the position in space. In addition, there are less tangible invisible properties, such as
those described by the electromagnetic field. The latter describes the properties re-
sponsible for the electric and magnetic phenomena in Nature, on which much of our
modern culture depends. Additionally, there are bilocal properties, such as distances
between two points in space. There are also nonlocal, region-dependent properties,
such as the diameter, mass, and volume of an extended object, or the surface area of
its boundary.
Objects often move. Just like photographs of stars in a long term night exposure,
they trace out tracks in an abstract 3-dimensional space. These tracks form curves
of a thickness depending on the objects’ size. The theory of special relativity teaches
us beyond this 3-dimensional picture of the world a 4-dimensional perspective in a
4-dimensional Minkowski space, whose coordinates represent both space and time.
Due to length contraction and time dilation, shapes look and clocks move differently
for observers moving at different velocities relative to each other. In special relativity,
moving points are represented by so-called world lines; the curves they trace out in
Minkowski space. The objects we see are extended in space, and therefore trace out
world tubes—thin or thick tracks in 4 dimensions with boundaries reflecting the sharp
or fuzzy, constant or changing shape of the objects.
Materials vibrate and produce sound. The electromagnetic field vibrates and pro-
duces light. Both are phenomena characterizing the behavior of waves. These can be
decomposed into harmonic waves of specified direction and frequency. The possible
frequencies of vibration make up a spectrum. A small part of these spectra are directly
observable by the human ear and eye; a very large part is indirectly observable through
various spectroscopic techniques.
Fields are representations of the continuum, infinitely divisible space and time.
But continuous fields are also the cause of discrete events. Continuous water waves
may cause discrete, random damage. Bullets fired on plexiglass described by the stress
fields of continuum mechanics cause visible, discrete random cracks emanating from
the center of impact. Casting a die, modeled by the continuous laws of classical me-
chanics, results in a random, discrete value—depending on which face it falls.
If we compare the motion of the Moon, a car, a leaf falling from a tree, or a pollen
corn in water, we realize that light objects move less predictably. This introduces a sec-
ond form of randomness into scientific descriptions. Often, measurements do not pro-
duce exactly the same results. Typically, the best empirical approximation to the true
X | Preface

value of something measured is a simple average of multiple measurements—there is

a democracy of measurement results. This insight, a form of the law of large numbers,
justifies statistical techniques. They allow one to obtain much useful information from
many inaccurate measurements.
This feature of Nature extends down to the smallest scales. On the scale of hu-
man experience, unanimated matter is highly predictable. But on the molecular and
atomic level, matter is observed to behave mostly in a random way. Therefore, the re-
producible information about microscopic events consists mostly of statistical prop-
erties, such as chemical reaction rates. On the subatomic level, Nature’s behavior is
so uncertain that even the opinions on what exists are somewhat controversial.
A new approach. From a more technical perspective, the new approach described
in this book may be summarized as follows:
Coherent quantum physics is physics in terms of a coherent space consisting
of a line bundle over a classical phase space and an appropriate coherent product.
The kinematical structure of quantum physics and the meaning of the fundamen-
tal quantum observables are given by the symmetries of this coherent space, their
infinitesimal generators, and associated operators on the quantum space of the co-
herent space.
The formal, mathematical core of quantum physics is cleanly separated from the
interpretational issues. To achieve this, we need to avoid some of the traditional quan-
tum mechanical jargon. In particular, following the convention of Allahverdyan
et al. [7], we add the prefix “q-” to all traditional quantum notions that suggest by
their name a particular interpretation, and hence might confuse the borderline be-
tween theory and interpretation. In particular, the operators usually called1 “ob-
servables” will be called “q-observables” to distinguish them from observables in
the operational sense of numbers obtainable from observation. Similarly, we use the
terms q-expectation and q-probability for the conventional but formally defined terms
expectation and probability.
Objective properties, including their uncertainties are given by q-expectations of
products of quantum fields and what is computable from these. The dynamics of the
universe is given by the Ehrenfest equations for q-expectations, and defines the dy-
namics of every physical subsystem by restriction. Particles are approximate effective
descriptions of certain extended blops of mass and/or energy, descriptions that make
sense only under special conditions.
Certain q-expectations are approximately observed in experiments. Like ordinary
averages, q-expectations become more accurate (that is, less uncertain) by averag-
ing over many similar items. Averaging over macroscopic spacetime regions produces
macroscopic quantities with negligible uncertainty, and leads to classical physics.

1 This notion appears first in Dirac’s 1930 book [70, pp. 28]. Later editions make the restriction that
observables are Hermitian, and have real spectrum.
 Preface | XI

The new approach involves one radical step, the reinterpretation of an assumption
underlying traditional quantum physics that was virtually never questioned before:
The eigenvalue link between theory and observation is replaced by a q-expectation
link. This leads to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, the thermal inter-
pretation, introduced in Chapter 9. It transforms the way one has to think about the
relation between theory and reality:
When performing on a quantum system a measurement of a quantity A with a
physical meaning, one gets an approximation for its value. The thermal interpretation
treats the measured value as an approximation not of an eigenvalue of A but of the q-
expectation of A, the formal expectation value defined as the trace of the product of
A with a density operator describing the state of the system. The approximation error
is of the order of the uncertainty σA . This postulate is more or less implied by—and
hence more cautious than—the traditional postulate that the measured value is an
eigenvalue, obtained with the probability given by Born’s rule.
This novel postulate of the thermal interpretation remains therefore valid
in all cases where the traditional postulates apply. It avoids a number of problems
of Born’s rule (collected in the Appendix).
For this book, I rearranged, condensed, and augmented the material from a num-
ber of preprints (Neumaier [202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 211] and Neumaier & Ghaani
Farashahi [212]; see also the exposition at the website Neumaier [200]) such that,
after an introductory chapter—explaining the reasons for the book and the main
results—the formal “shut-up-and-calculate”, probably less controversial part—comes
first, the thermal interpretation comes second, and the detailed critique of the tradi-
tion (that motivated everything) comes last.
The coherent foundations proposed here in a programmatic way resolve the prob-
lems with the traditional presentation of quantum mechanics discussed in the intro-
ductory Chapter 1. Part I features the mathematics of quantum physics, a formal core
and its development that follows in a purely logical way from basic axioms and def-
initions that build on it. It gives a coherent, interpretation-independent description
of quantum theory. Part II motivates, defines, and develops the thermal interpreta-
tion and its implication for the complex of conceptual issues called the measurement
problem. Part III is an Appendix containing a detailed critique of Born’s rule, a cen-
terpiece of the tradition, of the concepts of states and ensembles, and a comparison
to traditional interpretations.
This book is not an introduction to quantum mechanics. Much of the material is in-
tended to be nontechnical, needing only a fairly elementary background. It is aimed at
a wide audience that is familiar with some traditional quantum mechanics and basic
terms from functional analysis. But another large part of the material is addressed to
XII | Preface

experts.2 There I refer to technical aspects, usually explained in the references given.
Thus, where necessary, I draw whatever seems relevant for coherent foundations from
functional analysis, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and statistical me-
chanics, while skipping many techniques that are treated in typical textbooks. For the
sake of definiteness, the fundamental description of Nature is taken in this book to be
given by 4-dimensional relativistic quantum field theory in Minkowski space-time.3
Since this is ongoing research, I also refer to material that is still unpublished and will
appear elsewhere.
For the discussion of questions related to this book, please use the discussion fo-
rum Physics Overflow at https://www.physicsoverflow.org. See also my webpage
on the thermal interpretation at https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/
therm. A list of errata will be maintained there; please report corrections to me at
[email protected].
I would like to thank Arash Ghaani Farashahi, Waltraud Huyer, Rahel Knöpfel,
David Bar Moshe, Mike Mowbray, Karl-Hermann Neeb, Hermann Schichl and Eric Wof-
sey for useful discussions related to coherent spaces. The material on interpretation
benefited from discussions with Hendrik van Hees, Rahel Knöpfel, Mike Mowbray,
Paul Pöll, and Francois Ziegler, which are also gratefully appreciated.
The puzzle of making sense of the foundations of quantum physics held my atten-
tion for many years. Around 2003, I discovered that group coherent states are for many
purposes very useful objects; before, they were—for me—just a facet that physicists
(who needed them for quantum optics) studied. In 2007, I realized that apparently
all of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory can be profitably cast into this
form, and that coherent states may provide better theoretical foundations for quan-
tum mechanics and quantum field theory than the current Fock space approach. Since
then I have been putting them bit by bit into the new framework, and always found
(after some work) everything nicely fitting. With each new piece in place, I got in-
sights about how to interpret everything, and things got simpler and simpler as I pro-
ceeded. Or rather, more and more complicated things became understandable with-
out significantly increasing the complexity of the new picture. Everything became
much more transparent and intuitive than the traditional mental picture of quantum
physics.
Hints at a possible thermal interpretation of quantum physics go back at least to
1997; see the above quotes by Wetterich and Klauder. The thermal interpretation of
quantum physics itself emerged from my foundational 2003 paper Neumaier [194].

2 Nonexperts are advised to simply skip the more advanced passages and continue reading when the
discussion becomes again less technical. In particular, Part II does not depend on Chapters 4–6 and
Section 7.2, and Part III is independent of Parts I and II.
3 It does not matter whether or not there is a deeper underlying structure, such as that of string theory,
in terms of which quantum field theory would be an effective theory only. For simplicity, curved space-
times are not considered.
 Preface | XIII

It was developed by me in discussions on the newsgroups de.sci.physik, starting in

Spring 2004, and in later discussions on PhysicsForums; for the beginnings see Neu-
maier [196]. A first version of it was fully formalized (without naming the interpreta-
tion) in Sections 5.1, 5.4, and Chapter 7 of the 2008 edition of the online book by Neu-
maier & Westra [214]; see also Sections 8.1, 8.4, and Chapter 10 of the 2011 edition.
The term “thermal interpretation” appeared first in a 2010 lecture (Neumaier [197]).
Later I created a dedicated website on the topic (Neumaier [198]). A recent view closely
related to the thermal interpretation is the 2017 work by Allahverdyan et al. [7].
I trust you will enjoy reading the book!

Vienna, June 14, 2019,

Arnold Neumaier
Foreword
The predictions of quantum mechanics are remarkably accurate, but aspects of the
interpretation of quantum mechanics are still not agreed upon.
The use of coherent states as basic tools in quantum mechanics has several ad-
vantages. As an example, I cite their role in quantum/classical issues, as illustrated
by the quantum action functional given by

󵄨 𝜕 󵄨
AQ = ∫ ⟨ψ(t)󵄨󵄨󵄨(iℏ − H(P, Q))󵄨󵄨󵄨ψ(t)⟩dt
𝜕t

for normalized general Hilbert space vectors |ψ(t)⟩. However, classical observers may
be limited to fewer vectors, such as

󵄨󵄨 −iq(t)P/ℏ ip(t)Q/ℏ
󵄨󵄨p(t), q(t)⟩ = e e |any⟩,

which involve moving the system to a new position q or new velocity v = p/m. This
leads to

󵄨 𝜕 󵄨
AC = ∫ ⟨p(t), q(t)󵄨󵄨󵄨(iℏ − H(P, Q))󵄨󵄨󵄨p(t), q(t)⟩dt
𝜕t

= ∫ (p(t)q(t)
̇ − H(p(t), q(t)))dt + O(ℏ; p(t), q(t)).

Observe that this is the classical action functional, with quantum corrections for ℏ > 0,
as it must be in the real world.
The author’s book is full of connections of this sort, and they can certainly help
in clarifying quantum mechanics!

August 7, 2019
John R. Klauder

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110667387-202
Contents
Preface | VII

Foreword | XV

1 Introduction | 1
1.1 The 7 basic rules of quantum mechanics | 1
1.2 Interpretations of quantum mechanics | 3
1.3 Quantum magic | 5
1.4 Coherent quantum physics | 8
1.5 Overview to Part I | 10
1.6 Overview to Part II | 11
1.7 Overview to Part III | 12

Part I: Mathematical concepts for quantum physics

2 Basic quantum physics | 17

2.1 Axioms for the formal core of quantum physics | 17
2.2 The Ehrenfest picture of quantum mechanics | 19
2.3 The classical approximation | 23
2.4 The Rydberg–Ritz combination principle | 25
2.5 The pure state idealization | 27
2.6 Schrödinger equation and formal Born rule | 28

3 Uncertainty, statistics, probability | 31

3.1 Uncertainty | 31
3.2 Expectations as properties of anonymous events | 34
3.3 Classical probability via expectation | 35
3.4 Description dependence of probabilities | 39
3.5 The stochastic description of a deterministic system | 41
3.6 Deterministic and stochastic aspects of q-expectations | 42
3.7 What is probability? | 45

4 Euclidean spaces | 47
4.1 Euclidean spaces and their antidual | 47
4.2 Norm and completion of a Euclidean space | 50
4.3 Linear mappings between Euclidean spaces | 53
XVIII | Contents

4.4 Functions of positive type | 54

4.5 Constructing functions of positive type | 56
4.6 The Moore–Aronszajn theorem | 59
4.7 Reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces and Mercer’s theorem | 61
4.8 Theorems by Bochner and Kreĭn | 62
4.9 Theorems by Schoenberg and Menger | 64
4.10 The Berezin–Wallach set | 66

5 Coherent spaces | 69
5.1 Motivation for coherent spaces | 69
5.2 Coherent spaces | 70
5.3 Quantum spaces | 72
5.4 Length, angle, distance | 75
5.5 Vectors in the augmented quantum space | 77
5.6 New states from old ones | 78
5.7 Some examples | 79
5.8 Normal, projective, and nondegenerate coherent spaces | 83
5.9 Symmetries | 88
5.10 Uses of coherent spaces | 90

6 Coherent quantum physics | 93

6.1 The coherent action principle | 93
6.2 Systems with classical and quantum view | 94
6.3 Quantization and the dynamics of q-observables | 97
6.4 Relations to geometric quantization | 100
6.5 Lie ∗-algebras | 102
6.6 Quantities, states, uncertainty | 103
6.7 Examples | 106
6.8 Coherent chaos | 107
6.9 Dynamical Lie algebras | 109

7 Quantum field theory and quantum statistical mechanics | 113

7.1 Fields and their dynamics | 114
7.2 Coherent spaces for quantum field theory | 116
7.3 Observability in quantum field theory | 119
7.4 Currents | 121
7.5 Coarse-graining | 123
7.6 Gibbs states | 124
7.7 Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics | 126
7.8 Conservative mixed quantum-classical dynamics | 129
7.9 Important examples of quantum-classical dynamics | 131
7.10 Koopman’s representation of classical statistical mechanics | 132
 Contents | XIX

Part II: The interpretation of quantum physics

8 Requirements for good foundations | 135

8.1 Interpreting the formal core | 135
8.2 The interpretation of mature theories | 137
8.3 Is quantum physics a mature theory? | 141
8.4 Objective properties | 144
8.5 The universe as a quantum system | 146
8.6 A classical view of the qubit | 147

9 The thermal interpretation of quantum physics | 151

9.1 A reinterpretation of the tradition | 151
9.2 The thermal interpretation | 153
9.3 The interpretation of quantum-classical systems | 160
9.4 Advantages of the thermal interpretation | 161
9.5 Open problems | 163

10 Measurement | 165
10.1 Objective properties and their measurement | 165
10.2 Physical systems and their states | 167
10.3 A single qubit as a subsystem of the universe | 168
10.4 The emergence of Born’s rule | 170
10.5 Relations to decoherence | 174
10.6 Measurement errors | 175
10.7 What should be the true value? | 178

11 Measurement devices | 181

11.1 Measurement protocols | 182
11.2 Statistical and deterministic measurements | 184
11.3 Macroscopic systems and deterministic instruments | 187
11.4 Statistical instruments | 189
11.5 Probability measurements | 190
11.6 Chaos, randomness, and quantum measurement | 193
11.7 The statistical mechanics of definite, discrete events | 195
11.8 Dissipation, bistability, and Born’s rule | 198

12 Particles | 201
12.1 The photoelectric effect | 202
12.2 Particle tracks | 204
12.3 How real are particles? | 206
12.4 Particles from quantum fields | 208
12.5 Fock space and particle description | 209
XX | Contents

12.6 Physical particles in interacting field theories | 210

12.7 Semiclassical approximation and geometric optics | 211

13 Some quantum experiments | 215

13.1 Quantum buckets and time-resolved events on a screen | 215
13.2 Particle decay | 216
13.3 The Stern–Gerlach experiment in terms of currents | 218
13.4 The Stern–Gerlach experiment in terms of particles | 220
13.5 Relativistic causality | 222
13.6 Nonlocal correlations and conditional information | 223

Part III: Appendix: Critique of the tradition

14 A critique of Born’s rule | 229

14.1 Early, measurement-free formulations of Born’s rule | 230
14.2 Formulations of Born’s rule in terms of measurement | 232
14.3 Limitations of Born’s rule | 235

15 Pure states and mixed states | 239

15.1 What is a state? | 239
15.2 The nature of mixed state? | 241
15.3 What is an ensemble? | 243
15.4 Pure states in quantum field theory | 244

16 Traditional interpretations | 247

16.1 A classification of interpretations | 248
16.2 The Copenhagen interpretation | 249
16.3 The minimal statistical interpretation | 253

Bibliography | 257

Authors | 271

Index | 275
1 Introduction
This chapter sets the informal stage for the subject matter of the book. Section 1.1
presents in concise form what is typically taught as the basics in quantum physics
courses around the world. Section 1.2 gives a short overview of the most important in-
terpretations of these basic rules that were spawned by a century-long lack of clarity
of the meaning of quantum mechanics. Section 1.3 gives an account of the deplorable
tradition of quantum magic that resulted from this lack of clarity. Section 1.4, the final
section, gives a preview of the coherent quantum physics proposed in this book as a
solution to the problems of interpreting quantum physics.

1.1 The 7 basic rules of quantum mechanics

The 7 basic rules (BR1)–(BR7) given below (taken from Neumaier [211]) reflect what is
typically taught as the basics in quantum physics courses around the world. They are
found in almost all introductory quantum mechanics textbooks.1 Often they are stated
in terms of axioms or postulates, but this is not essential for their practical validity. In
some interpretations, some of these rules are not considered fundamental rules, but
as empirical or effective rules for practical purposes.
The footnotes contain generalizations of these rules for degenerate eigenvalues,
for mixed states, and for measurements not defined by self-adjoint operators, but by
POVMs: see Footnote 7 below. These generalizations are necessary to apply quantum
mechanics to all situations encountered in practice. The basic rules are carefully for-
mulated so that they are correct as they stand and, at the same time, fully compatible
with these generalizations.
(BR1) A quantum system is described using a Hilbert space2 ℋ.
(BR2) A pure state of a quantum system is represented by a normalized vector
|ψ⟩ in ℋ; state vectors differing only by a phase factor of absolute value 1 represent
the same state.3 In the position representation, where the Hilbert space is the space
of square integrable functions of a position vector x, ψ(x) is called the wave function
of the system.

1 Among them are: Basdevant 2016; Cohen-Tannoudji, Diu and Laloe 1977; Dirac 1930, 1967; Gasiorow-
icz 2003; Greiner 2008; Griffiths and Schroeter 2018; Landau and Lifshitz 1958, 1977; Liboff 2003; McIn-
tyre 2012; Messiah 1961; Peebles 1992; Rae and Napolitano 2015; Sakurai 2010; Shankar 2016; Weinberg
2013. Even Ballentine 1998, who rejects rule (BR7), whose process (9.9), as fundamental, derives it in
the form of his (9.21) as an effective rule.
2 Often, this Hilbert space is assumed to be separable, that is, to have a countable orthonormal basis.
3 Equivalently, a pure state can be represented by a rank 1 density operator ρ = |ψ⟩⟨ψ|, satisfying
ρ2 = ρ = ρ∗ and Tr ρ = 1. Mixed states are represented by more general (nondempotent) Hermitian
density operators of trace 1.

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2 | 1 Introduction

(BR3) The time evolution of an isolated quantum system represented by the state
vector |ψ(t)⟩ is given by4

d 󵄨󵄨 󵄨
iℏ 󵄨ψ(t)⟩ = H 󵄨󵄨󵄨ψ(t)⟩,
dt 󵄨

where H is the Hamilton operator and ℏ is Planck’s constant. This is the Schrödinger
equation. This rule is valid in the formulation of quantum mechanics called the
Schrödinger picture. There are other, equivalent formulations of the time evolution,
especially the Heisenberg picture and the interaction pictures, where time evolution
is entirely or partially shifted from the state vector to the operators.
(BR4) An observable of a quantum system is represented by a Hermitian operator
A with real spectrum5 acting on a dense subspace of ℋ.
(BR5) The possible measured values of a measurement of an observable are the
spectral values of the corresponding operator A. In the case of a discrete spectrum,
these are the eigenvalues a satisfying A|a⟩ = a|a⟩.
(BR6) Let {|a⟩} be a complete set of (generalized) eigenvectors of the self-adjoint
operator A with spectral values a. Let the quantum system be prepared in a state rep-
resented by the state vector |ψ⟩. If a measurement of the observable corresponding
to A is performed, the probability (density) pψ (a) for finding the measured value a is
given by

󵄨 󵄨2
pψ (a) = 󵄨󵄨󵄨⟨a|ψ⟩󵄨󵄨󵄨 .

This is Born’s rule, in a formulation that assumes that all eigenvalues are nondegen-
erate.6
(BR7) For successive, nondestructive projective measurements with discrete re-
sults,7 each measurement with measuring value a can be regarded as the preparation

4 It is equivalent to define the time evolution of an isolated quantum system by

󵄨󵄨 󵄨
󵄨󵄨ψ(t)⟩ = U(t)󵄨󵄨󵄨ψ(0)⟩
󵄨 󵄨

with the unitary time evolution operator U(t) = e−iHt/ℏ . The evolution according to (BR3) is therefore
also referred to as unitary evolution.
5 Equivalently, A is self-adjoint.
6 In the case of degenerate eigenvalues, let {|a, ν⟩} be a complete set of (generalized) eigenvectors
of A, indexed by ν. The probability pψ (a) for finding the measured value a is then given by summing
(or integrating) over ν, that is, over the entire a-subspace
󵄨 󵄨2
pψ (a) = ∑󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨⟨a, ν|ψ⟩󵄨󵄨󵄨󵄨 .
ν

7 The projection postulate is valid only under the assumptions stated, such as passing barriers with
holes or slits, polarization filters, and certain other instruments that modify the state of a quantum sys-
tem passing through it. This (nonunitary, dissipative) change of the state to an eigenstate in the course

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 1.2 Interpretations of quantum mechanics | 3

of a new state, whose state vector is the corresponding eigenvector |a⟩, to be used for
the calculation of subsequent time evolution and further measurements. This is the
von Neumann projection postulate.
These rules say nothing about the practically very important problem of how
to handle a nonisolated quantum system outside of explicit measurement contexts.
Hence they are only an approximate guide to the meaning of quantum mechanics
in general. Applying the rules in practice requires further assumptions and develop-
ments.

1.2 Interpretations of quantum mechanics

My ‘orthodoxy’ is not identical to that of Bohr, nor to that of Peierls, to mention two especially emi-
nent examples. Hence I must state my definition of ‘orthodoxy’.
Kurt Gottfried, 1991 [103, p. 36]

Orthodox QM, I am suggesting, consists of shifting between two different ways of understanding
the quantum state according to context: interpreting quantum mechanics realistically in contexts
where interference matters, and probabilistically in contexts where it does not. Obviously this is con-
ceptually unsatisfactory (at least on any remotely realist construal of QM) – it is more a description
of a practice than it is a stable interpretation. […] The ad hoc, opportunistic approach that physics
takes to the interpretation of the quantum state, and the lack, in physical practice, of a clear and
unequivocal understanding of the state – this is the quantum measurement problem.
David Wallace, 2016 [292, p. 22, p. 24]

Not further discussing the foundations of quantum mechanics beyond this is called
shut-up-and-calculate. It is the mode of working sufficient for all who do not want
to delve into often highly disputed foundational (and partly philosophical) problems.
However, the above-mentioned rules are often considered conceptually unsatisfactory
because they introduce not well-defined terms “probability”, “measurement”, and
“observer” to define these basic rules, whereas in principle one expects that at least
measurement and observation can be regarded as quantum mechanical processes or
interactions, which follow the same fundamental rules and do not play any special
role. The associated issues are treated in different ways by different interpretations
of quantum mechanics.
In the Copenhagen interpretation (also called standard interpretation or or-
thodox interpretation; terminology and interpretation details vary), the above rules

of a projective measurement is often referred to as “state reduction” or “collapse of the wave function”
or “reduction of the wave packet”. Note that there is no direct conflict with the unitary evolution in
(BR3), since during a measurement a system is never isolated.
In other cases, the prepared state may be quite different; see the discussion in Landau & Lifschitz
[171, Section 7]. The most general kind of quantum measurement and the resulting prepared state is
described by so-called positive operator valued measures (POVMs).

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4 | 1 Introduction

are simply operational rules that work in practice. The state vector is a tool that one
uses to calculate the probabilities of measurement outcomes, and one is agnostic
about whether the state vector represents any object that exists in reality. Rules (BR6)
and (BR7) apply only when a measurement has occurred. Thus, unlike in classical
physics, it is not enough to specify the initial conditions of the state, and let the
state evolve. One must also specify when a measurement has occurred: Generally,
a measurement is understood to have occurred when a definite (irreversible, that is,
nonunitary) measurement result or outcome has been obtained. For example, the ob-
server records a mark on a screen. (However, passing a Stern–Gerlach magnet—which
in modern terminology is a premeasurement only—is frequently, but inaccurately,
considered to be a measurement, although it is described by a unitary process, where
even in principle no measurement result becomes available.)
A noteworthy aspect of the standard interpretation is that the state vector cannot
represent the whole universe, but must exclude an observer or measuring apparatus
that decides when a measurement has occurred; this is the so-called Heisenberg cut
between the quantum and the classical world. To date, this has not been a problem in
making successful experimental predictions, so practitioners are often satisfied with
the quantum formalism and the standard interpretation.
However, many have suggested that there is a conceptual problem with the stan-
dard interpretation because the whole universe presumably obeys laws of physics. So
there should be laws of physics that describe the whole universe, without any need
to exclude any observer or measurement apparatus from the quantitative description.
Then one must be able to derive the rules (BR5)–(BR7) for measuring subsystems of the
universe from the dynamics of the universe. The problem of how to do this is called the
measurement problem. A related problem, the problem of the emergence of a classi-
cal macroscopic world from the microscopic quantum description, is often considered
as essentially solved by decoherence.
To solve the measurement problem, other interpretations of the quantum formal-
ism or theories have been proposed. These alternative interpretations or theories are
based on different postulates than those of the standard interpretation, but seek to ex-
plain why the standard interpretation has been so successful (for example, by deriving
the rules of the standard interpretation from other postulates). The major alternative
interpretations or theories that have been proposed include Everett’s relative state
interpretation (or many worlds interpretation), the ensemble interpretation (or
minimal statistical interpretation), the transactional interpretation, and the con-
sistent histories interpretation.
Still other interpretations (for example, Bohmian mechanics, Ghirardi–Rimi-
ni–Weber theory, the cellular automaton interpretation, and the thermal inter-
pretation) modify one or more of the 7 basic rules, and only strive to derive the latter in
some approximation for all practical purposes (FAPP). In particular, rule (BR7) cannot
be fundamental if one wants to interpret the state vector |ψ⟩ in an ontic way, that is,

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 1.3 Quantum magic | 5

as some direct and ‘faithful’ representation of ‘externally existing reality’ independent

from any observer, observation or measurement.
An interpretation of quantum mechanics relates the formalism to the actual infor-
mal practice of using quantum mechanics in our scientific culture. It must show that
there is a consistent relation between theory and practice, but to show this, it may use
objects familiar from our culture without having to explain their working.
The minimal statistical interpretation does this for predicting the outcome of ex-
periments. It is silent about the interpretation of quantum mechanics in the absence
of measurements, and in particular about the interpretation of quantum physics ap-
plied to the far past before experiments were possible. This is a serious gap, but it is
consistent, just incomplete (as it should be for a “minimal” interpretation).
The Copenhagen interpretation that claims (in its most radical version) that noth-
ing can be asserted in the absence of a measurement is also consistent. But this sounds
like the concept that a tree fallen in the wood has fallen only after someone has seen
it, and is part of the reason (see Section 1.3 below) why quantum mechanics comes
across as somewhat strange. In a many-world interpretation anything goes, and at not
even specifiable times, the world splits and splits completely unnoticed by us. This is
already science fiction by conception.
The other known interpretations are either variations of the above or require ad-
ditional, in principle, unobservable and hence fictional stuff. Thus, none of the tradi-
tional interpretations is satisfactory.
According to the thermal interpretation of quantum physics featured in Part II of
this book, Nature existed before human minds existed and observed it. Nature has
now and had then objective properties comprehended and described locally by q-
expectations of quantum fields and nonlocally by more complicated q-expectations.
Perceptions (including experiments and measurements) and the resulting knowledge
only provide approximations to these objective properties. People have better approxi-
mations about precisely those aspects about which they are more knowledgeable. The
laws and symmetries of standard quantum field theory are taken to apply exactly to
Nature, though we only approximately know the details of the field content, the de-
tailed interactions, and the detailed state of the universe. We can only explain part of
the history and predict part of the future since our knowledge and understanding of
the true state of the universe is limited.

1.3 Quantum magic

Die Wahrscheinlichkeitsinterpretation (insbesondere für das spontane Auftreten von Partikeleigen-
schaften) wird allen Physikstudenten als unumstößliches Dogma ins Gehirn gebrannt. Sie ist für
viele Zwecke natürlich gerechtfertigt, beschreibt jedoch nur die halbe Wahrheit über die Wellen-
funktion und überläßt die Anwendung der dabei zu benutzenden statistischen Regeln weitgehend
der situationsbedingten Intuition.
Dieter Zeh, 2012 [314, p. 47]

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6 | 1 Introduction

I consider it to be an intellectual scandal that, nearly one hundred years after the discovery of ma-
trix mechanics by Heisenberg, Born, Jordan and Dirac, many or most professional physicists – ex-
perimentalists and theorists alike – admit to be confused about the deeper meaning of Quantum
Mechanics (QM), or are trying to evade taking a clear standpoint by resorting to agnosticism or to
overly abstract formulations of QM that often only add to the confusion.
Jürg Fröhlich, 2019 [92, p. 1]

Traditionally, those learning quantum theory are expected to abandon classical think-
ing and to learn thinking in a quantum mechanical framework completely different
from that of classical mechanics. Though students widely differ in the order in which
this happens, sooner or later, most of them are introduced to the items mentioned in
the following caricature:
– Typically, they are introduced to quantum mechanics by Planck’s explanation of
black body radiation and the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization rules explaining the
spectral lines for the hydrogen atom, firmly establishing that Nature is quantized.
– Then they are told that Bohr’s view is obsolete, and that it was just a happy (or
even misleading) coincidence that the old quantum theory worked for hydrogen.
– Therefore, they are next acquainted with wave functions on configuration space,
their inner product, and the resulting Hilbert spaces of square integrable wave
functions.
– But almost immediately, unnormalizable bras and kets are used that do not belong
to the Hilbert space.
– They are told with little intuitive guidance (except for a vague postulated corre-
spondence principle that cannot be made to work in many cases) that in quan-
tum mechanics, observables are replaced by Hermitian operators on this Hilbert
space.
– Later they may (or may not) learn that many of these operators are not even de-
fined on the Hilbert space, but only on a subspace.
– Then they must learn that between measurements, position and momentum – and
hence well-defined paths – do not exist, but that when measured, they miracu-
lously get random values.
– They are taught the connection to classical physics by establishing the Ehrenfest
theorem for expectation values that obey, approximately, classical laws. Miracu-
lously, the system has at all times a well-defined mean path, even when not mea-
sured.
– They must swallow a mysterious law defining the distribution of these random
values, called Born’s rule. It is justified by the remark that it is proved by the Stern–
Gerlach experiment. But Born’s rule is claimed to hold for all conceivable quan-
tum measurements, although this experiment neither demonstrates the measure-
ment of position, nor of momentum or other important quantities.
– No explanation is given how the Stern–Gerlach screen can possibly find out
that a particle—without having position or momentum—arrives to be measured.

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 1.3 Quantum magic | 7

The Stern–Gerlach device and all of quantum mechanics begins to look like
magic.8
– They are made familiar with the postulated collapse of the wave function that
prepares the system in an eigenstate of the measured observable.
– But for measuring position or momentum, these eigenstates do not exist since
they are unnormalizable.
– As a result, classical and quantum physics appear like totally separated realms
with totally different concepts and tools, connected only by a rough-and-ready
notion of correspondence that is ambiguous and never made precise, but works
in a few key cases (and always with liberally enough usage).
– After considerable time, when they have some experience with spectral calcula-
tions, they learn how to use group theory (or, for those with only little algebra
background, spherical harmonics—rotation group representation tools in dis-
guise) to determine the spectrum for hydrogen. Miraculously, the results are
identical with those obtained by Bohr, whose approach was earlier declared to be
obsolete.
– At a far later stage, they meet (if at all) coherent states for describing laser light,
or as a tool for a semiclassical understanding of the harmonic oscillator. Miracu-
lously, a coherent state happens to perform under the quantum dynamics exact
classical oscillations.
– Only few students will also meet coherent states for the hydrogen atom, the Berry
phase, Maslov indices, and the accompanying theory of geometric quantization,
which gives the (slightly corrected) Bohr–Sommerfeld rules for the spectrum a
very respectable place in the quantum theory of exactly solvable systems, even
today relevant for semiclassical approximations.
– Even fewer students realize that this implies that, after all, classical mechan-
ics and quantum mechanics are not that far apart. A development of quantum
mechanics emphasizing the closeness of classical mechanics and quantum me-
chanics can be found in the online book by Neumaier & Westra [214].

Why does the conventional curriculum lead to such a strange state of affairs? Perhaps
this is the case because tradition builds the quantum edifice on a time-honored foun-
dation, which accounts for essentially all experimental facts, but takes a “shut-up-
and-calculate” attitude with respect to the interpretation of the foundations. The tra-
ditional presentation of quantum physics is clearly adequate for prediction, but seems
not to be suitable for an adequate understanding.
Another reason might be that the weirdness in quantum mechanics seems to play
an important, entertaining social role in the communication of physics. In the quan-

8 In quantum information theory, there is another, formal meaning of the terms “magic”, which has
nothing to do with this informal magic.

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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
political, as well as a literary significance. They were the means by
which the spirit of Welsh disaffection under English rule was kept
alive, and at times fanned into a blaze. The fable of the massacre of
the bards by Edward I is now discredited, but an ordinance of his
against Keltic ‘bards and rhymers’ is upon record, and was
subsequently repeated under Henry IV[300].
An important question now presents itself. How far, in this
heterogeneous welter of mediaeval minstrelsy, is it possible to
distinguish any elements which can properly be called dramatic? The
minstrels were entertainers in many genres. Were they also actors?
An answer may be sought first of all in their literary remains. The
first condition of drama is dialogue, and dialogue is found both in
lyric and in narrative minstrelsy. Naturally, it is scantiest in lyric. But
there is a group of chansons common to northern France and to
southern France or Provence, which at least tended to develop in
this direction. There are the chansons à danser, which are frequently
a semi-dialogue between a soloist and a chorus, the one singing the
verses, the other breaking into a burden or refrain. There are the
chansons à personnages or chansons de mal mariée, complaints of
unhappy wives, which often take the form of a dialogue between the
woman and her husband, her friend or, it may be, the poet,
occasionally that of a discussion on courtly love in general. There are
the aubes, of which the type is the morning dialogue between
woman and lover adapted by Shakespeare with such splendid effect
in the third act of Romeo and Juliet. And finally there are the
pastourelles, which are generally dialogues between a knight and a
shepherdess, in which the knight makes love and, successful or
repulsed, rides away. All these chansons, like the chansons d’histoire
or de toile, which did not develop into dialogues, are, in the form in
which we have them, of minstrel origin. But behind them are
probably folk-songs of similar character, and M. Gaston Paris is
perhaps right in tracing them to the fêtes du mai, those agricultural
festivals of immemorial antiquity in which women traditionally took
so large a part. A further word will have to be said of their ultimate
contribution to drama in a future chapter[301].
 Other lyrical dialogues of very different type found their way into
the literature of northern France from that of Provence. These were
the elaborate disputes about abstract questions, generally of love, so
dear to the artistic and scholastic mind of the trobaire. There was
the tenson (Fr. tençon) in which two speakers freely discussed a
given subject, each taking the point of view which seems good to
him. And there was the joc-partitz or partimen (Fr. jeu-parti or
parture), in which the challenger proposed a theme, indicated two
opposed attitudes towards it, and gave his opponent his choice to
maintain one or other[302]. Originally, no doubt the tensons and the
jocs-partitz were, as they professed to be, improvised verbal
tournaments: afterwards they became little more than academic
exercises[303]. To the drama they have nothing to say.
The dialogue elements in lyric minstrelsy thus exhausted, we turn
to the wider field of narrative. But over the greater space of this field
we look in vain. If there is anything of dialogue in the chansons de
gestes and the romans it is merely reported dialogue such as every
form of narrative poetry contains, and is not to the purpose. It is not
until we come to the humbler branches of narrative, the unimportant
contes and dits, that we find ourselves in the presence of dialogue
proper. Dits and fabliaux dialogués are not rare[304]. There is the
already quoted Deus Bordeors Ribauz in which two jougleurs meet
and vaunt in turn their rival proficiencies in the various branches of
their common art[305]. There is Rutebeuf’s Charlot et le Barbier, a
similar ‘flyting’ between two gentlemen of the road[306]. There is
Courtois d’Arras, a version of the Prodigal Son story[307]. There is Le
Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely, a specimen of witty minstrel
repartee, of which more will be said immediately. These dialogues
naturally tend to become of the nature of disputes, and they merge
into that special kind of dit, the débat or disputoison proper. The
débat is a kind of poetical controversy put into the mouths of two
types or two personified abstractions, each of which pleads the
cause of its own superiority, while in the end the decision is not
infrequently referred to an umpire in the fashion familiar in the
eclogues of Theocritus[308]. The débats thus bear a strong
resemblance to the lyric tençons and jeux-partis already mentioned.
Like the chansons, they probably owe something to the folk festivals
with their ‘flytings’ and seasonal songs. In any case they are
common ground to minstrelsy and to the clerkly literature of the
Middle Ages. Many of the most famous of them, such as the Débat
de l’Hiver et de l’Été, the Débat du Vin et de l’Eau, the Débat du
Corps et de l’Âme, exist in neo-Latin forms, the intermediaries being
naturally enough those vagantes or wandering scholars, to whom so
much of the interaction of learned and of popular literature must be
due[309]. And in their turn many of the débats were translated
sooner or later into English. English literature, indeed, had had from
Anglo-Saxon days a natural affinity for the dialogue form[310], and
presents side by side with the translated débats others—strifs or
estrifs is the English term—of native origin[311]. The thirteenth-
century Harrowing of Hell is an estrif on a subject familiar in the
miracle plays: and for an early miracle play it has sometimes been
mistaken[312]. Two or three other estrifs of English origin are
remarkable, because the interlocutors are not exactly abstractions,
but species of birds and animals[313].
Dialogue then, in one shape or another, was part of the minstrel’s
regular stock-in-trade. But dialogue by itself is not drama. The notion
of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular
stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles
between at least two performers. Is there anything to be traced in
minstrelsy that satisfies these conditions? So far as impersonation is
concerned, there are several scattered notices which seem to show
that it was not altogether unknown. In the twelfth century for
instance, Ælred, abbot of Rievaulx, commenting on certain
unpleasing innovations in the church services of the day, complains
that the singers use gestures just like those of histriones, fit rather
for a theatrum than for a house of prayer[314]. The word theatrum
is, however, a little suspicious, for an actual theatre in the twelfth
century is hardly thinkable, and with a learned ecclesiastic one can
never be sure that he is not drawing his illustrations rather from his
knowledge of classical literature than from the real life around him.
It is more conclusive, perhaps, when fabliaux or contes speak of
minstrels as ‘doing’ l’ivre, or le cat, or le sot[315]; or when it appears
from contemporary accounts that at a performance in Savoy the
manners of England and Brittany were mimicked[316]. In Provence
contrafazedor seems to have been a regular name for a
minstrel[317]; and the facts that the minstrels wore masks ‘with
intent to deceive’[318], and were forbidden to wear ecclesiastical
dresses[319], also point to something in the way of rudimentary
impersonation.
As for the distribution of rôles, all that can be said, so far as the
débats and dits dialogués go, is, that while some of them may
conceivably have been represented by more than one performer,
none of them need necessarily have been so, and some of them
certainly were not. There is generally a narrative introduction and
often a sprinkling of narrative interspersed amongst the dialogue.
These parts may have been pronounced by an auctor or by one of
the interlocutors acting as auctor, and some such device must have
been occasionally necessitated in the religious drama. But there is
really no difficulty in supposing the whole of these pieces to have
been recited by a single minstrel with appropriate changes of
gesture and intonation, and in The Harrowing of Hell, which begins
‘A strif will I tellen of,’ this was clearly the case. The evidences of
impersonation given above are of course quite consistent with such
an arrangement; or, for the matter of that, with sheer monologue.
The minstrel who recited Rutebeuf’s Dit de l’Erberie may readily be
supposed to have got himself up in the character of a quack[320].
But the possibilities of secular mediaeval drama are not quite
exhausted by the débats and dits dialogués. For after all, the written
literature which the minstrels have left us belongs almost entirely to
those higher strata of their complex fraternity which derived from
the thoroughly undramatic Teutonic scôp. But if mediaeval farce
there were, it would not be here that we should look for it. It would
belong to the inheritance, not of the scôp, but of the mimus. The
Roman mimus was essentially a player of farces; that and little else.
It is of course open to any one to suppose that the mimus went
down in the seventh century playing farces, and that his like
appeared in the fifteenth century playing farces, and that not a farce
was played between. But is it not more probable on the whole that,
while occupying himself largely with other matters, he preserved at
least the rudiments of the art of acting, and that when the appointed
time came, the despised and forgotten farce, under the stimulus of
new conditions, blossomed forth once more as a vital and effective
form of literature? In the absence of data we are reduced to
conjecture. But the mere absence of data itself does not render the
conjecture untenable. For if such rudimentary, or, if you please,
degenerate farces as I have in mind, ever existed in the Middle
Ages, the chances were all against their literary survival. They were
assuredly very brief, very crude, often improvised, and rarely, if ever,
written down. They belonged to an order of minstrels far below that
which made literature[321]. And one little bit of evidence which has
not yet been brought forward seems to point to the existence of
something in the way of a secular as well as a religious mediaeval
drama. In the well-known Wyclifite sermon against miracle plays, an
imaginary opponent of the preacher’s argument is made to say that
after all it is ‘lesse yvels that thei have thyre recreaceon by pleyinge
of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis’; and again that ‘to pley in
rebaudye’ is worse than ‘to pley in myriclis[322].’ Now, there is of
course no necessary dramatic connotation either in the word ‘pley’
or in the word ‘japis,’ which, like ‘bourde’ or ‘gab’ is frequently used
of any kind of rowdy merriment, or of the lower types of minstrelsy
in general[323]. But on the other hand the whole tone of the passage
seems to draw a very close parallel between the ‘japis’ and the
undeniably dramatic ‘myriclis,’ and to imply something in the former
a little beyond the mere recitation, even with the help of
impersonation, of a solitary mime.
 Such rude farces or ‘japis’ as we are considering, if they formed
part of the travelling equipment of the humbler mimes, could only
get into literature by an accident; in the event, that is to say, of
some minstrel of a higher class taking it into his head to experiment
in the form or to adapt it to the purposes of his own art. And this is
precisely what appears to have happened. A very natural use of the
farce would be in the parade or preliminary patter, merely about
himself and his proficiency, which at all times has served the
itinerant entertainer as a means whereby to attract his audiences.
And just as the very similar boniment or patter of the mountebank
charlatan at a fair became the model for Rutebeuf’s Dit de l’Erberie,
so the parade may be traced as the underlying motive of other dits
or fabliaux. The Deus Bordeors Ribauz is itself little other than a
glorified parade, and another, very slightly disguised, may be found
in the discomfiture of the king by the characteristic repartees of the
wandering minstrel in Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jougleur d’Ely[324].
The parade, also, seems to be the origin of a certain familiar type of
dramatic prologue in which the author or the presenters of a play
appear in their own persons. The earliest example of this is perhaps
that enigmatic Terentius et Delusor piece which some have thought
to point to a representation of Terence somewhere in the dark ages
between the seventh and the eleventh century[325]. And there is a
later one in the Jeu du Pèlerin which was written about 1288 to
precede Adan de la Hale’s Jeu de Robin et Marion.
The renascence of farce in the fifteenth century will call for
consideration in a later chapter. It is possible that, as is here
suggested, that renascence was but the coming to light again of an
earth-bourne of dramatic tradition that had worked its way beneath
the ground ever since the theatres of the Empire fell. In any case,
rare documents of earlier date survive to show that it was at least no
absolutely sudden and unprecedented thing. The jeux of Adan de la
Hale, indeed, are somewhat irrelevant here. They were not farces,
and will fall to be dealt with in the discussion of the popular fêtes
from which they derive their origin[326]. But the French farce of Le
Garçon et l’Aveugle, ascribed to the second half of the thirteenth
century, is over a hundred years older than any of its extant
successors[327]. And even more interesting to us, because it is of
English provenance and in the English tongue, is a fragment found in
an early fourteenth-century manuscript of a dramatic version of the
popular mediaeval tale of Dame Siriz[328]. This bears the heading
Hic incipit interludium de Clerico et Puella. But the significance of
this fateful word interludium must be left for study at a later period,
when the history of the secular drama is resumed from the point at
which it must now be dropped.
 BOOK II

FOLK DRAMA
Stultorum infinitus est numerus.

Ecclesiastes.
 CHAPTER V
THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK

[Bibliographical Note.—The conversion of heathen

England is described in the Ecclesiastical History of Bede
(C. Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, 1896). Stress is laid
on the imperfect character of the process by L. Knappert,
Le Christianisme et le Paganisme dans l’Histoire
ecclésiastique de Bède le Vénérable (in Revue de l’Histoire
des Religions, 1897, vol. xxxv). A similar study for Gaul is
E. Vacandard, L’Idolatrie dans la Gaule (in Revue des
Questions historiques, 1899, vol. lxv). Witness is borne to
the continued presence of pre-Christian elements in the
folk-civilization of western Europe both by the general
results of folk-lore research and by the ecclesiastical
documents of the early Middle Ages. Of these the most
important in this respect are—(1) the Decrees of Councils,
collected generally in P. Labbe and G. Cossart,
Sacrosancta Concilia (1671-2), and J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum
Conciliorum nova et amplissima Collectio (1759-98), and
for England in particular in D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnae
Britanniae et Hiberniae (1737) and A. W. Haddan and W.
Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to
Great Britain and Ireland (1869-78). An interesting series
of extracts is given by G. Gröber, Zur Volkskunde aus
Concilbeschlüssen und Capitularien (1894):—(2) the
Penitentials, or catalogues of sins and their penalties
drawn up for the guidance of confessors. The most
important English example is the Penitential of Theodore
(668-90), on which the Penitentials of Bede and of Egbert
are based. Authentic texts are given by Haddan and
Stubbs, vol. iii, and, with others of continental origin, in F.
W. H. Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der
abendländischen Kirche (1851), and H. J. Schmitz, Die
Bussbücher und die Bussdisciplin der Kirche (1883). The
most interesting for its heathen survivals is the eleventh-
century Collectio Decretorum of Burchardus of Worms
(Migne, P. L. cxl, extracts in J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology,
iv. 1740):—(3) Homilies or Sermons, such as the Sermo
ascribed to the seventh-century St. Eligius (P. L. lxxxvii.
524, transl. Grimm, iv. 1737), and the eighth-century
Frankish pseudo-Augustinian Homilia de Sacrilegiis (ed. C.
P. Caspari, 1886):—(4) the Vitae of the apostles of the
West, St. Boniface, St. Columban, St. Gall, and others. A
critical edition of these is looked for from M. Knappert.
The Epistolae of Boniface are in P. L. lxxxix. 593:—(5)
Miscellaneous Documents, including the sixth-century De
correctione Rusticorum of Bishop Martin of Braga in Spain
(ed. C. P. Caspari, 1883) and the so-called Indiculus
Superstitionum et Paganiarum (ed. H. A. Saupe, 1891), a
list of heathen customs probably drawn up in eighth-
century Saxony.—The view of primitive religion taken in
this book is largely, although not altogether in detail, that
of J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890, 2nd ed. 1900),
which itself owes much to E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture
(1871); W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (2nd
ed. 1894); W. Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus der Germanen
(1875); Antike Wald-und Feldkulte (1875-7). A more
systematic work on similar lines is F. B. Jevons, An
Introduction to the History of Religion (1896): and
amongst many others may be mentioned A. Lang, Myth,
Ritual, and Religion (1887, 2nd ed. 1899), the conclusions
of which are somewhat modified in the same writer’s The
Making of Religion (1898); Grant Allen, The Evolution of
the Idea of God (1897); E. S. Hartland, The Legend of
Perseus (1894-6); J. Rhys, The Origin and Growth of
Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (1888). The
 last of these deals especially with Keltic data, which may
be further studied in H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, Le Cycle
mythologique irlandais et la Mythologie celtique (1884),
together with the chapter on La Religion in the same
writer’s La Civilisation des Celtes et celle de l’Épopée
homérique (1899) and A. Bertrand, La Religion des
Gaulois (1897). Teutonic religion has been more
completely investigated. Recent works of authority are E.
H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie (1891); W. Golther,
Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie (1895); and the
article by E. Mogk on Mythologie in H. Paul’s Grundriss der
germanischen Philologie, vol. iii (2nd ed. 1897). The
collection of material in J. Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology
(transl. J. S. Stallybrass, 1880-8) is still of the greatest
value. The general facts of early German civilization are
given by F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins (1892), and for
the Aryan-speaking peoples in general by O. Schräder,
Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples (transl. F. B.
Jevons, 1890), and Reallexicon der indo-germanischen
Altertumskunde (1901). In dealing with the primitive
calendar I have mainly, but not wholly, followed the
valuable researches of A. Tille, Deutsche Weihnacht
(1893) and Yule and Christmas (1899), a scholar the loss
of whom to this country is one of the lamentable results of
the recent war.]
Minstrelsy was an institution of the folk, no less than of the court
and the bourgeoisie. At many a village festival, one may be sure, the
taberers and buffoons played their conspicuous part, ravishing the
souls of Dorcas and Mopsa with merry and doleful ballads, and
tumbling through their amazing programme of monkey tricks before
the ring of wide-mouthed rustics on the green. Yet the soul and
centre of such revels always lay, not in these alien professional
spectacula, but in other entertainments, home-grown and racy of
the soil, wherein the peasants shared, not as onlookers only, but as
performers, even as their fathers and mothers, from immemorial
antiquity, had done before them. A full consideration of the village
ludi is important to the scheme of the present book for more than
one reason. They shared with the ludi of the minstrels the hostility of
the Church. They bear witness, at point after point, to the deep-lying
dramatic instincts of the folk. And their substantial contribution to
mediaeval and Renaissance drama and dramatic spectacle is greater
than has been fully recognized.
Historically, the ludi of the folk come into prominence with the
attacks made upon them by the reforming ecclesiastics of the
thirteenth century and in particular by Robert Grosseteste, bishop of
Lincoln[329]. Between 1236 and 1244 Grosseteste issued a series of
disciplinary pronouncements, in which he condemned many customs
prevalent in his diocese. Amongst these are included miracle plays,
‘scotales’ or drinking-bouts, ‘ram-raisings’ and other contests of
athletic prowess, together with ceremonies known respectively as
the festum stultorum and the Inductio Maii sive Autumni[330]. Very
similar are the prohibitions contained in the Constitutions (1240) of
Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester[331]. These particularly
specify the ludus de Rege et Regina, a term which may be taken as
generally applicable to the typical English folk-festival, of which the
Inductio Maii sive Autumni, the ‘May-game’ and ‘mell-supper,’
mentioned by Grosseteste, are varieties[332]. Both this ludus, in its
various forms, and the less strictly popular festum stultorum, will
find ample illustration in the sequel. Walter de Chanteloup also lays
stress upon an aggravation of the ludi inhonesti by the performance
of them in churchyards and other holy places, and on Sundays or the
vigils and days of saints[333].
The decrees of the two bishops already cited do not stand alone.
About 1250 the University of Oxford found it necessary to forbid the
routs of masked and garlanded students in the churches and open
places of the city[334]. These appear to have been held in connexion
with the feasts of the ‘nations’ into which a mediaeval university was
divided. Articles of visitation drawn up in connexion with the
provisions of Oxford in 1253 made inquiry as to several of the
obnoxious ludi and as to the measures adopted to check them
throughout the country[335]. Prohibitions are upon record by the
synod of Exeter in 1287[336], and during the next century by the
synod of York in 1367[337], and by William of Wykeham, bishop of
Winchester, in 1384[338]; while the denunciations of the rulers of the
church find an unofficial echo in that handbook of ecclesiastical
morality, Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne[339]. There is,
however, reason to suppose that the attitude thus taken up hardly
represents that of the average ecclesiastical authority, still less that
of the average parish priest, towards the ludi in question. The
condemnatory decrees should probably be looked upon as the
individual pronouncements of men of austere or reforming temper
against customs which the laxer discipline of their fellows failed to
touch; perhaps it should rather be said, which the wiser discipline of
their fellows found it better to regulate than to ban. At any rate
there is evidence to show that the village ludi, as distinct from the
spectacula of the minstrels, were accepted, and even to some extent
directed, by the Church. They became part of the parochial
organization, and were conducted through the parochial machinery.
Doubtless this was the course of practical wisdom. But the moralist
would find it difficult to deny that Robert Grosseteste and Walter de
Chanteloup had, after all, some reason on their side. On the one
hand they could point to the ethical lapses of which the ludi were
undoubtedly the cause—the drunkenness, the quarrels, the
wantonings, by which they were disgraced[340]. And on the other
they could—if they were historically minded—recall the origin of the
objectionable rites in some of those obscure survivals of heathenism
in the rustic blood, which half a dozen centuries of Christianity had
failed to purge[341]. For if the comparative study of religions proves
anything it is, that the traditional beliefs and customs of the
mediaeval or modern peasant are in nine cases out of ten but the
detritus of heathen mythology and heathen worship, enduring with
but little external change in the shadow of an hostile creed. This is
notably true of the village festivals and their ludi. Their full
significance only appears when they are regarded as fragments of
forgotten cults, the naïve cults addressed by a primitive folk to the
beneficent deities of field and wood and river, or the shadowy
populace of its own dreams. Not that when even the mediaeval
peasant set up his May-pole at the approach of summer or drove his
cattle through the bonfire on Midsummer eve, the real character of
his act was at all explicit in his consciousness. To him, as to his
descendant of to-day, the festival was at once a practice sanctioned
by tradition and the rare amusement of a strenuous life: it was not,
save perhaps in some unplumbed recesses of his being, anything
more definitely sacred. At most it was held to be ‘for luck,’ and in
some vague general way, to the interest of a fruitful year in field and
fold. The scientific anthropologist, however, from his very different
point of view, cannot regard the conversion to Christianity as a
complete solution of continuity in the spiritual and social life of
western Europe. This conversion, indeed, was clearly a much slower
and more incomplete process than the ecclesiastical chroniclers quite
plainly state. It was so even on the shores of the Mediterranean. But
there the triumph of Christianity began from below. Long before the
edict of Milan, the new religion, in spite of persecutions, had got its
firm hold upon the masses of the great cities of the Empire. And
when, less than a century later, Theodosius made the public
profession of any other faith a crime, he was but formally
acknowledging a chose jugée. But even in these lands of the first
ardour the old beliefs and, above all, the old rituals died hard.
Lingering unacknowledged in the country, the pagan, districts, they
passed silently into the dim realm of folk-lore. How could this but be
more so when Christianity came with the missionaries of Rome or of
Iona to the peoples of the West? For with them conversion was
hardly a spontaneous, an individual thing. As a rule, the baptism of
the king was the starting-point and motive for that of his followers:
and the bulk of the people adopted wonderingly an alien cult in an
alien tongue imposed upon them by the will of their rulers. Such a
Christianity could at best be only nominal. Ancient beliefs are not so
easily surrendered: nor are habits and instincts, deep-rooted in the
lives of a folk, thus lightly laid down for ever, at the word of a king.
The churches of the West had, therefore, to dispose somehow of a
vast body of practical heathenism surviving in all essentials beneath
a new faith which was but skin-deep. The conflict which followed is
faintly adumbrated in the pages of Bede: something more may be
guessed of its fortunes by a comparison of the customs and
superstitions recorded in early documents of church discipline with
those which, after all, the peasantry long retained, or even now
retain.
Two letters of Gregory the Great, written at the time of the
mission of St. Augustine, are a key to the methods adopted by the
apostles of the West. In June 601, writing to Ethelbert of Kent by the
hands of abbot Mellitus, Gregory bade the new convert show zeal in
suppressing the worship of idols, and throwing down their
fanes[342]. Having written thus, the pope changed his mind. Before
Mellitus could reach England, he received a letter instructing him to
expound to Augustine a new policy. ‘Do not, after all,’ wrote Gregory,
‘pull down the fanes. Destroy the idols; purify the buildings with holy
water; set relics there; and let them become temples of the true
God. So the people will have no need to change their places of
concourse, and where of old they were wont to sacrifice cattle to
demons, thither let them continue to resort on the day of the saint
to whom the church is dedicated, and slay their beasts no longer as
a sacrifice, but for a social meal in honour of Him whom they now
worship[343].’ There can be little doubt that the conversion of
England proceeded in the main on the lines thus laid down by
Gregory. Tradition has it that the church of Saint Pancras outside the
walls of Canterbury stands on the site of a fane at which Ethelbert
himself once worshipped[344]; and that in London St. Paul’s replaced
a temple and grove of Diana, by whom the equivalent Teutonic
wood-goddess, Freyja, is doubtless intended[345]. Gregory’s
directions were, perhaps, not always carried out quite so literally as
this. When, for instance, the priest Coifi, on horseback and sword in
hand, led the onslaught against the gods of Northumbria, he bade
his followers set fire to the fane and to all the hedges that girt it
round[346]. On the other hand, Reduald, king of East Anglia, must
have kept his fane standing, and indeed he carried the policy of
amalgamation further than its author intended, for he wavered faint-
heartedly between the old religion and the new, and maintained in
one building an altare for Christian worship and an arula for sacrifice
to demons[347]. Speaking generally, it would seem to have been the
endeavour of the Christian missionaries to effect the change of creed
with as little dislocation of popular sentiment as possible. If they
could extirpate the essentials, or what they considered as the
essentials, of heathenism, they were willing enough to leave the
accidentals to be worn away by the slow process of time. They did
not, probably, quite realize how long it would take. And what
happened in England, happened also, no doubt, on the continent,
save perhaps in such districts as Saxony, where Christianity was
introduced vi et armis, and therefore in a more wholesale, if not in
the end a more effectual fashion[348].
The measure of surviving heathenism under Christianity must
have varied considerably from district to district. Much would depend
on the natural temper of the converts, on the tact of the clergy and
on the influence they were able to secure. Roughly speaking, the old
worships left their trace upon the new society in two ways. Certain
central practices, the deliberate invocation of the discarded gods, the
deliberate acknowledgement of their divinity by sacrifice, were
bound to be altogether proscribed[349]. And these, if they did not
precisely vanish, at least went underground, coming to light only as
shameful secrets of the confessional[350] or the witch-trial[351], or
when the dominant faith received a rude shock in times of especial
distress, famine or pestilence[352]. Others again were absorbed into
the scheme of Christianity itself. Many of the protective functions, for
instance, of the old pantheon were taken over bodily by the Virgin
Mary, by St. John, St. Michael, St. Martin, St. Nicholas, and other
personages of the new dispensation[353]. And in particular, as we
have seen shadowed forth in Pope Gregory’s policy, the festal
customs of heathenism, purified so far as might be, received a
generous amount of toleration. The chief thing required was that the
outward and visible signs of the connexion with the hostile religion
should be abandoned. Nor was this such a difficult matter. Cult, the
sum of what man feels it obligatory upon him to do in virtue of his
relation to the unseen powers, is notoriously a more enduring thing
than belief, the speculative, or mythology, the imaginative statement
of those relations. And it was of the customs themselves that the
people were tenacious, not of the meaning, so far as there was still
a meaning, attached to them, or of the names which their priests
had been wont to invoke. Leave them but their familiar revels, and
the ritual so indissolubly bound up with their hopes of fertility for
their flocks and crops, they would not stick upon the explicit
consciousness that they drank or danced in the might of Eostre or of
Freyr. And in time, as the Christian interpretation of life became an
everyday thing, it passed out of sight that the customs had been
ritual at all. At the most a general sense of their ‘lucky’ influence
survived. But to stop doing them; that was not likely to suggest itself
to the rustic mind. And so the church and the open space around
the church continued to be, what the temple and the temple precinct
had been, the centre, both secular and religious, of the village life.
From the Christian point of view, the arrangement had its obvious
advantages. It had also this disadvantage, that so far as obnoxious
elements still clung to the festivals, so far as the darker practices of
heathenism still lingered, it was precisely the most sacred spot that
they defiled. Were incantations and spells still muttered secretly for
the good will of the deposed divinities? it was the churchyard that
was sure to be selected as the nocturnal scene of the unhallowed
ceremony. Were the clergy unable to cleanse the yearly wake of
wanton dance and song? it was the church itself, by Gregory’s own
decree, that became the focus of the riot.
The partial survival of the village ceremonies under Christianity
will appear less surprising when it is borne in mind that the
heathenism which Christianity combated was itself only the final
term of a long process of evolution. The worshippers of the Keltic or
Teutonic deities already practised a traditional ritual, probably
without any very clear conception of the rationale on which some at
least of the acts which they performed were based. These acts had
their origin far back in the history of the religious consciousness; and
it must not be supposed, because modern scholarship, with its
comparative methods, is able to some extent to reconstruct the
mental conditions out of which they arose, that these conditions
were still wholly operative in the sixth, any more than in the
thirteenth or the twentieth century. Side by side with customs which
had still their definite and intelligible significance, religious
conservatism had certainly preserved others of a very primitive type,
some of which survived as mere fossils, while others had undergone
that transformation of intention, that pouring of new wine into old
bottles, which is one of the most familiar features in the history of
institutions. The heathenism of western Europe must be regarded,
therefore, as a group of religious practices originating in very
different strata of civilization, and only fused together in the
continuity of tradition. Its permanence lay in the law of association
through which a piece of ritual originally devised by the folk to
secure their practical well-being remained, even after the initial
meaning grew obscure, irrevocably bound up with their expectations
of that well-being. Its interest to the student is that of a
development, rather than that of a system. Only the briefest outline
of the direction taken by this development can be here indicated.
But it must first be pointed out that, whether from a common
derivation, or through a similar intellectual structure reacting upon
similar conditions of life, it seems, at least up to the point of
emergence of the fully formed village cult, to have proceeded on
uniform lines, not only amongst the Teutonic and Keltic tribes who
inhabited western and northern Europe and these islands, but also
amongst all the Aryan-speaking peoples. In particular, although the
Teutonic and the Keltic priests and bards elaborated, probably in
comparatively late stages of their history, very different god-names
and very different mythologies, yet these are but the superstructure
of religion; and it is possible to infer, both from the results of folk-
lore and from the more scanty documentary evidence, a substantial
identity throughout the whole Kelto-Teutonic group, of the
underlying institutions of ritual and of the fundamental theological
conceptions[354]. I am aware that it is no longer permissible to sum
up all the facts of European civilization in an Aryan formula.
Ethnology has satisfactorily established the existence on the
continent of at least two important racial strains besides that of the
blonde invader from Latham-land[355]. But I do not think that any of
the attempts hitherto made to distinguish Aryan from pre-Aryan
elements in folk-lore have met with any measure of success[356]. Nor
is it quite clear that any such distinction need have been implied by
the difference of blood. Archaeologists speak of a remarkable
uniformity of material culture throughout the whole of Europe during
the neolithic period; and there appears to be no special reason why
this uniformity may not have extended to the comparatively simple
notions which man was led to form of the not-man by his early
contacts with his environment. In any case the social amalgamation
of Aryan and pre-Aryan was a process already complete by the
Middle Ages; and for the purpose of this investigation it seems
justifiable, and in the present state of knowledge even necessary, to
treat the village customs as roughly speaking homogeneous
throughout the whole of the Kelto-Teutonic area.
An analysis of these customs suggests a mental history
somewhat as follows. The first relations of man to the not-man are,
it need hardly be said, of a practical rather than a sentimental or a
philosophic character. They arise out of an endeavour to procure
certain goods which depend, in part at least, upon natural processes
beyond man’s own control. The chief of these goods is, of course,
food; that is to say, in a primitive state of civilization, success in
hunting, whether of berries, mussels and ‘witchetty grubs,’ or of
more elusive and difficult game; and later, when hunting ceases to
be the mainstay of existence, the continued fertility of the flocks and
herds, which form the support of a pastoral race, and of the
cornfields and orchards which in their turn come to supplement
these, on the appearance of agriculture. Food once supplied, the
little tale of primitive man’s limited conception of the desirable is
soon completed. Fire and a roof-tree are his already. But he asks for
physical health, for success in love and in the begetting of offspring,
and for the power to anticipate by divination that future about which
he is always so childishly curious. In the pursuit, then, of these
simple goods man endeavours to control nature. But his earliest
essays in this direction are, as Dr. Frazer has recently pointed out,
not properly to be called religion[357]. The magical charms by which
he attempts to make the sun burn, and the waters fall, and the wind
blow as it pleases him, certainly do not imply that recognition of a
quasi-human personality outside himself, which any religious
definition may be supposed to require as a minimum. They are
rather to be regarded as applications of primitive science, for they
depend upon a vague general notion of the relations of cause and
effect. To assume that you can influence a thing through what is
similar to it, or through what has been in contact with it, which,
according to Dr. Frazer, are the postulates of magic in its mimetic
and its sympathetic form respectively, may be bad science, but at
least it is science of a sort, and not religion.
The magical charms play a large part in the village ritual, and will
be illustrated in the following chapter. Presently, however, the
scientific spirit is modified by that tendency of animism through
which man comes to look upon the external world not as mere more
or less resisting matter to be moved hither or thither, but rather as a
debateable land peopled with spirits in some sense alive. These
spirits are the active forces dimly discerned by human imagination as
at work behind the shifting and often mysterious natural phenomena
—forces of the moving winds and waters, of the skies now clear,
now overcast, of the animal races of hill and plain, of the growth
waxing and waning year by year in field and woodland. The control
of nature now means the control of these powers, and to this object
the charms are directed. In particular, I think, at this stage of his
development, man conceives a spirit of that food which still remains
in the very forefront of his aspirations, of his actual food-plant, or of
the animal species which he habitually hunts[358]. Of this spirit he
initiates a cult, which rests upon the old magical principle of the
mastering efficacy of direct contact. He binds the spirit literally to
him by wearing it as a garment, or absorbs it into himself in a
solemn meal, hoping by either process to acquire an influence or
power over it. Naturally, at this stage, the spirit becomes to the eye
of his imagination phytomorphic or theriomorphic in aspect. He may
conceive it as especially incarnate in a single sacred plant or animal.
But the most critical moment in the history of animism is that at
which the elemental spirits come to be looked upon as
anthropomorphic, made in the likeness of man himself. This is
perhaps due to the identification of them with those other quasi-
human spirits, of whose existence man has by an independent line
of thought also become aware. These are the ghostly spirits of
departed kinsmen, still in some shadowy way inhabiting or revisiting
the house-place. The change does not merely mean that the visible
phytomorphic and theriomorphic embodiments of mental forces sink
into subordination; the plants and animals becoming no more than
symbols and appurtenances of the anthropomorphic spirit, or
temporary forms with which from time to time he invests himself. A
transformation of the whole character of the cult is involved, for man
must now approach the spirits, not merely by charms, although
conservatism preserves these as an element in ritual, but with
modifications of the modes in which he approaches his fellow man.
He must beg their favour with submissive speech or buy it with
bribes. And here, with prayer and oblation, religion in the stricter
sense makes its appearance.
The next step of man is from the crowd of animistic spirits to
isolate the god. The notion of a god is much the old notion of an
anthropomorphic elemental spirit, widened, exalted, and further
removed from sense. Instead of a local and limited home, the god
has his dwelling in the whole expanse of heaven or in some distant
region of space. He transcends and as an object of cult supplants
the more bounded and more concrete personifications of natural
forces out of which he has been evolved. But he does not annul
these: they survive in popular credence as his servants and
ministers. It is indeed on the analogy of the position of the human
chief amongst his comitatus that, in all probability, the conception of
the god is largely arrived at. Comparative philology seems to show
that the belief in gods is common to the Aryan-speaking peoples,
and that at the root of all the cognate mythologies there lies a single
fundamental divinity. This is the Dyaus of the Indians, the Zeus of
the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, the Tiwaz (O.H.G. Zîu, O.N.
Týr, A.-S. Tîw) of the Teutons. He is an embodiment of the great
clear sunlit heavens, the dispenser of light to the huntsman, and of
warmth and moisture to the crops. Side by side with the conception
of the heaven-god comes that of his female counterpart, who is also,
though less clearly, indicated in all the mythologies. In her earliest
aspect she is the lady of the woods and of the blossoming fruitful
earth. This primary dualism is an extremely important factor in the
explanation of early religion. The all-father, the heaven, and the
mother-goddess, the earth, are distinct personalities from the
beginning. It does not appear possible to resolve one into a mere
doublet or derivative of the other. Certainly the marriage of earth
and heaven in the showers that fertilize the crops is one of the
oldest and most natural of myths. But it is generally admitted that
myth is determined by and does not determine the forms of cult.
The heaven-god and the earth-goddess must have already had their
separate existence before the priests could hymn their marriage. An
explanation of the dualism is probably to be traced in the merging of
two cults originally distinct. These will have been sex-cults. Tillage is,
of course, little esteemed by primitive man. It was so with the
Germans, even up to the point at which they first came into contact
with the Romans[359]. Yet all the Aryan languages show some
acquaintance with the use of grains[360]. The analogy with existing
savages suggests that European agriculture in its early stages was
an affair of the women. While the men hunted or afterwards tended
their droves of cattle and horses, the women grubbed for roots, and
presently learnt to scratch the surface of the ground, to scatter the
seed, and painfully to garner and grind the scanty produce[361]. As
the avocations of the sexes were distinct, so would their magic or
their religion be. Each would develop rites of its own of a type
strictly determined by its practical ambitions, and each would stand
apart from the rites of the other. The interest of the men would
centre in the boar or stag, that of the women in the fruit-tree or the
wheat-sheaf. To the former the stone altar on the open hill-top
would be holy; to the latter the dim recesses of the impenetrable
grove. Presently when the god concept appeared, the men’s divinity
would be a personification of the illimitable and mysterious heavens
beneath which they hunted and herded, from which the pools were
filled with water, and at times the pestilence was darted in the sun
rays; the women’s of the wooded and deep-bosomed earth out of
which their wealth sprang. This would as naturally take a female as
that a male form. Agriculture, however, was not for ever left solely to
the women. In time pasturage and tillage came to be carried on as
two branches of a single pursuit, and the independent sex-cults
which had sprung out of them coalesced in the common village
worship of later days. Certain features of the primitive differentiation
can still be obscurely distinguished. Here and there one or the other
sex is barred from particular ceremonies, or a male priest must
perform his mystic functions in woman’s garb. The heaven-god
perhaps remains the especial protector of the cattle, and the earth-
goddess of the corn. But generally speaking they have all the
interests of the farm in a joint tutelage. The stone altar is set up in
the sacred grove; the mystic tree is planted on the hill-top[362].
Theriomorphic and phytomorphic symbols shadow forth a single
godhead[363]. The earth-mother becomes a divinity of light. The
heaven-father takes up his abode in the spreading oak.
The historic religions of heathenism have not preserved either
the primitive dualistic monotheism, if the phrase may be permitted,
or the simplicity of divine functions here sketched. With the advance
of civilization the objects of worship must necessarily take upon
them new responsibilities. If a tribe has its home by the sea, sooner
or later it trusts frail barks to the waters, and to its gods is
committed the charge of sea-faring. When handicrafts are invented,
these also become their care. When the pressure of tribe upon tribe
leads to war, they champion the host in battle. Moral ideas emerge
and attach themselves to their service: and ultimately they become
identified with the rulers of the dead, and reign in the shadowy
world beyond the tomb. Another set of processes combine to
produce what is known as polytheism. The constant application of
fixed epithets to the godhead tends in the long run to break up its
unity. Special aspects of it begin to take on an independent
existence. Thus amongst the Teutonic peoples Tiwaz-Thunaraz, the
thunderous sky, gives rise to Thunar or Thor, and Tiwaz-Frawiaz, the
bounteous sky, to Freyr. And so the ancient heaven-god is replaced
by distinct gods of rain and sunshine, who, with the mother-
goddess, form that triad of divinities so prominent in several
European cults[364]. Again as tribes come into contact with each
other, there is a borrowing of religious conceptions, and the tribal
deities are duplicated by others who are really the same in origin,
but have different names. The mythological speculations of priests
and bards cause further elaboration. The friendly national gods are
contrasted with the dark hostile deities of foreign enemies. A belief
in the culture-hero or semi-divine man, who wrests the gifts of
civilization from the older gods, makes its appearance. Certain cults,
such as that of Druidism, become the starting-point for even more
philosophic conceptions. The personal predilection of an important
worshipper or group of worshippers for this or that deity extends his
vogue. The great event in the later history of Teutonic heathenism is
the overshadowing of earlier cults by that of Odin or Wodan, who
seems to have been originally a ruler of the dead, or perhaps a
culture-hero, and not an elemental god at all[365]. The multiplicity of
forms under which essentially the same divinity presents itself in
history and in popular belief may be illustrated by the mother-
goddess of the Teutons. As Freyja she is the female counterpart of
Freyr; as Nerthus of Freyr’s northern doublet, Njordr. When Wodan
largely absorbs the elemental functions, she becomes his wife, as
Frîja or Frigg. Through her association with the heaven-gods, she is
herself a heaven-as well as an earth-goddess[366], the Eostre of
Bede[367], as well as the Erce of the Anglo-Saxon ploughing
charm[368]. She is probably the Tanfana of Tacitus and the
Nehellenia of the Romano-Germanic votive stones. If so, she must
have become a goddess of mariners, for Nehellenia seems to be the
Isis of the interpretatio Romana. As earth-goddess she comes
naturally into relation with the dead, and like Odin is a leader of the
rout of souls. In German peasant-lore she survives under various
names, of which Perchta is the most important; in witch-lore, as
Diana, and by a curious mediaeval identification, as Herodias[369].
And her more primitive functions are largely inherited by the Virgin,
by St. Walpurg and by countless local saints.
Most of the imaginative and mythological superstructure so
briefly sketched in the last paragraph must be considered as
subsequent in order of development to the typical village cult. Both
before and in more fragmentary shape after the death of the old
Keltic and Teutonic gods, that continued to be in great measure an
amalgam of traditional rites of forgotten magical or pre-religious
import. So far as the consciousness of the mediaeval or modern
peasant directed it to unseen powers at all, which was but little, it
was rather to some of these more local and bounded spirits who
remained in the train of the gods, than to the gods themselves. For
the purposes of the present discussion, it is sufficient to think of it
quite generally as a cult of the spirits of fertilization, without
attaching a very precise connotation to that term. Unlike the
domestic cult of the ancestral ghosts, conducted for each household
by the house-father at the hearth, it was communal in character.
Whatever the tenure of land may have been, there seems no doubt
that up to a late period ‘co-aration,’ or co-operative ploughing in
open fields, remained the normal method of tillage, while the cattle
of the community roamed in charge of a public herd over unenclosed
pastures and forest lands[370]. The farm, as a self-sufficing
agricultural unit, is a comparatively recent institution, the
development of which has done much to render the village festivals
obsolete. Originally the critical moments of the agricultural year were
the same for the whole village, and the observances which they
entailed were shared in by all.
The observances in question, or rather broken fragments of
them, have now attached themselves to a number of different
outstanding dates in the Christian calendar, and the reconstruction of
the original year, with its seasonal feasts, is a matter of some
difficulty[371]. The earliest year that can be traced amongst the
Aryan-speaking peoples was a bipartite one, made up of only two
seasons, winter and summer. For some reason that eludes research,
winter preceded summer, just as night, in the primitive reckoning,
preceded day. The divisions seem to have been determined by the
conditions of a pastoral existence passed in the regularly recurring
seasons of central Europe. Winter began when snow blocked the
pastures and the cattle had to be brought home to the stall: summer
when the grass grew green again and there was once more fodder
in the open. Approximately these dates would correspond to mid-
November and mid-March[372]. Actually, in the absence of a
calendar, they would vary a little from year to year and would
perhaps depend on some significant annual event, such as the first
snowstorm in the one case[373], in the other the appearance of the
first violet, butterfly or cockchafer, or of one of those migratory birds
which still in popular belief bring good fortune and the summer, the
swallow, cuckoo or stork[374]. Both dates would give occasion for
religious ceremonies, together with the natural accompaniment of
feasting and revel. More especially would this be the case at mid-
November, when a great slaughtering of cattle was rendered
economically necessary by the difficulty of stall-feeding the whole
herd throughout the winter. Presently, however, new conditions
established themselves. Agriculture grew in importance, and the
crops rather than the cattle became the central interest of the village
life. Fresh feasts sprang up side by side with the primitive ones, one
at the beginning of ploughing about mid-February, another at the
end of harvest, about mid-September. At the same time the
increased supply of dry fodder tended to drive the annual
slaughtering farther on into the winter. More or less
contemporaneously with these processes, the old bipartite year was
changed into a tripartite one by the growth of yet another new feast
during that dangerous period when the due succession of rain and
sun for the crops becomes a matter of the greatest moment to the
farmer. Early summer, or spring, was thus set apart from late
summer, or summer proper[375]. This development also may be
traced to the influence of agriculture, whose interest runs in a curve,
while that of herding keeps comparatively a straight course. But as
too much sun or too much wet not only spoils the crops but brings a
murrain on the cattle, the herdsmen fell into line and took their
share in the high summer rites. At first, no doubt, this last feast was
a sporadic affair, held for propitiation of the unfavourable fertilization
spirits when the elders of the village thought it called for. And to the
end resort may have been had to exceptional acts of cult in times of
especial distress. But gradually the occasional ceremony became an
annual one, held as soon as the corn was thick in the green blade
and the critical days were at hand.
So far, there has been no need to assume the existence of a
calendar. How long the actual climatic conditions continued to
determine the dates of the annual feasts can hardly be said. But
when a calendar did make its appearance, the five feasts adapted
themselves without much difficulty to it. The earliest calendar that
can be inferred in central Europe was one, either of Oriental or
possibly of Mediterranean provenance, which divided the year into
six tides of threescore days each[376]. The beginnings of these tides
almost certainly fell at about the middle of corresponding months of
the Roman calendar[377]. The first would thus be marked by the
beginning of winter feast in mid-November; two others by the
beginning of summer feast and the harvest feast in mid-March and
mid-August respectively. A little accommodation of the seasonal
feasts of the farm would be required to adapt them to the remaining
three. And here begins a process of dislocation of the original dates
of customs, now becoming traditional rather than vital, which was
afterwards extended by successive stages to a bewildering degree.
By this time, with the greater permanence of agriculture, the system
of autumn ploughing had perhaps been invented. The spring
ploughing festival was therefore of less importance, and bore to be
shifted back to mid-January instead of mid-February. Four of the six
tides are now provided with initial feasts. These are mid-November,
mid-January, mid-March, and mid-September. There are, however,
still mid-May and mid-July, and only the high summer feast to divide
between them. I am inclined to believe that a division is precisely
what took place, and that the hitherto fluctuating date of the
summer feast was determined in some localities to mid-May, in
others to mid-July[378].
The European three-score-day-tide calendar is rather an
ingenious conjecture than an ascertained fact of history. When the
Germano-Keltic peoples came under the influence of Roman
civilization, they adopted amongst other things the Roman calendar,
first in its primitive form and then in the more scientific one given to
it under Julius Caesar. The latter divided the year into four quarters
and twelve months, and carried with it a knowledge of the solstices,
at which the astronomy neither of Kelts nor of Germans seems to
have previously arrived[379]. The feasts again underwent a process
of dislocation in order to harmonize them with the new arrangement.
The ceremonies of the winter feast were pulled back to November 1
or pushed forward to January 1. The high summer feast was
attracted from mid-May and mid-July respectively to the important
Roman dates of the Floralia on May 1 and the summer solstice on
June 24. Last of all, to complete the confusion, came, on the top of
three-score-day-tide calendar and Roman calendar alike, the scheme
of Christianity with its host of major and minor ecclesiastical
festivals, some of them fixed, others movable. Inevitably these in
their turn began to absorb the agricultural customs. The present
distribution of the five original feasts, therefore, is somewhat as
follows. The winter feast is spread over all the winter half of the year
from All Souls day to Twelfth night. A later chapter will illustrate its
destiny more in detail. The ploughing feast is to be sought mainly in
Plough Monday, in Candlemas and in Shrovetide or Carnival[380]; the
beginning of summer feast in Palm Sunday, Easter and St. Mark’s
day; the early variety of the high summer feast probably also in
Easter, and certainly in May-day, St. George’s day, Ascensiontide with
its Rogations, Whitsuntide and Trinity Sunday; the later variety of
the same feast in Midsummer day and Lammastide; and the harvest
feast in Michaelmas. These are days of more or less general
observance. Locally, in strict accordance with the policy of Gregory
the Great as expounded to Mellitus, the floating customs have often
settled upon conveniently neighbouring dates of wakes,
rushbearings, kirmesses and other forms of vigil or dedication
festivals[381]; and even, in the utter oblivion of their primitive
significance, upon the anniversaries of historical events, such as
Royal Oak day on May 29[382], or Gunpowder day. Finally it may be
noted, that of the five feasts that of high summer is the one most
fully preserved in modern survivals. This is partly because it comes
at a convenient time of year for the out-of-door holiday-making
which serves as a preservative for the traditional rites; partly also
because, while the pastoral element in the feasts of the beginnings
of winter and summer soon became comparatively unimportant
through the subordination of pasturage to tillage, and the ploughing
and harvest feasts tended more and more to become affairs of the
individual farm carried out in close connexion with those operations
themselves, the summer feast retained its communal character and
continued to be celebrated by the whole village for the benefit of
everybody’s crops and trees, and everybody’s flocks and herds[383].
It is therefore mainly, although not wholly, upon the summer feast
that the analysis of the agricultural ritual to be given in the next
chapter will be based.
 CHAPTER VI
VILLAGE FESTIVALS

[Bibliographical Note.—A systematic calendar of

English festival usages by a competent folk-lorist is much
needed. J. Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities
(1777), based on H. Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares (1725),
and edited, first by Sir Henry Ellis in 1813, 1841-2 and
1849, and then by W. C. Hazlitt in 1870, is full of valuable
material, but belongs to the age of pre-scientific
antiquarianism. R. T. Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium
(1841), is no less unsatisfactory. In default of anything
better, T. F. T. Dyer, British Popular Customs (1891), is a
useful compilation from printed sources, and P. H.
Ditchfield, Old English Customs (1896), a gossipy account
of contemporary survivals. These may be supplemented
from collections of more limited range, such as H. J.
Feasey, Ancient English Holy Week Ceremonial (1897),
and J. E. Vaux, Church Folk-Lore (1894); by treatises on
local folk-lore, of which W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-
Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders
(2nd ed. 1879), C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, Shropshire
Folk-Lore (1883-5), and J. Rhys, Celtic Folk-Lore, Welsh
and Manx (1901), are the best; and by the various
publications of the Folk-Lore Society, especially the series
of County Folk-Lore (1895-9) and the successive
periodicals, The Folk-Lore Record (1878-82), Folk-Lore
Journal (1883-9), and Folk-Lore (1890-1903). Popular
accounts of French fêtes are given by E. Cortet, Essai sur
les Fêtes religieuses (1867), and O. Havard, Les Fêtes de
nos Pères (1898). L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud, Superstitions
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