BRIEF NOTES. 



By benjamin SMITH LYMAN. 

 (Read March i, 1918.) 



Soul. 



In the infancy of the human race, grown men, of course, had 

 the ideas of Httle children. As the eye and the sensory nerves 

 perceive the bodily actions and experiences, nearly the same as if 

 those of another body, so the invisible actions and experiences of 

 the brain are observed by the pineal gland or some other parts of the 

 brain, seemingly by a separate organ, or almost with the appearance 

 of the observer's being a distinct individual. The child-like early 

 men evidently so reckoned it, and, while making the observation by 

 their own brain, without conscious effort, considered the observer 

 to be separate from their body. This retired, refined observer of the 

 actions of their body and, to some extent, of their brain, they called 

 their soul, and imputed to it a separate existence, and, in some tribes, 

 a life beyond the life of the body, as suggested by apparitions and 

 dreams. As the idea was fundamentally child-like, it was readily ab- 

 sorbed by children, and with increasing years was tenaciously re- 

 tained. It did not seem inconsistent with the action of the invisible 

 wind and perhaps other actions of an invisible source. The ancient 

 Latin word for soul is even plainly derived from the word for 

 breath, showing that the soul was. in action, or originally, like air, 

 or the wind. In the course of time, the tenaciously held idea of the 

 soul has become more refined ; and, while the soul is still evidently 

 taken to be a material substance, it is quite etherially, tenuously re- 

 fined, and is often spoken of as altogether immaterial. Neverthe- 

 less, it always has, when sifted, undeniably several of the character- 

 istics of concrete matter. 



As late as medieval times, each human body was conceived to 

 have not only one, but at least three, souls. As the Right Reverend 

 Avitus, in the sixth century, elucidated : 



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