Chapter 13 

 ABOUT THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



In this chapter it seems that we have a somewhat difficult one, since 

 it deals with a substance imperceptible to the bodily senses, because 

 it is incorporeal and spiritual, nevertheless it has been possible to set 

 forth with concise words and briefly the belief which these Indians 

 held concerning the rational soul and how they imagined it, for the 

 purpose of observing something about its immortality ; but since there 

 are arguments pro and con, I shall expand somewhat more than I 

 have been accustomed to in the other chapters, in order that the reader 

 may be acquainted with the validity of both sides [of the argument], 

 and may be able to choose that which seems to him best, presenting 

 first my way of feeling and my opinion, according as I have been able 

 to understand and grasp, following their explanation. 



These Indians were materialists, for they imagined the soul to be the 

 spirit of life, which is taken in through the air that we breathe, without 

 their knowing or believing that within ourselves there is supposed to 

 be another substance distinct from the material body ; that is, that we 

 are no more than bones, flesh and blood, which constitute what com- 

 poses the body, which they call Petdcau. A name for distinguishing the 

 soul from the body they do not have ; they merely use the name pusun, 

 which is the generic term that means thing which is inside, and this 

 name they apply to the heart, since it is the principal place in man. 

 Since these Indians do not penetrate further than what they perceive or 

 can perceive with their senses, they do not attain to understand the 

 spirituality of our soul, but merely the materiality of our body, and 

 therefore are materialists, for they say that dead and with body 

 burned, nothing remained and everything was already ended. Also, as 

 we have mentioned in the preceding chapters the punishments which 

 they feared from their God Chinigchinix, were all bodily, such as 

 stumbling over rocks, falling down on the ground, being bitten by 

 rattlesnakes, [and] bears, and diseases, all of them ills of the body, 

 and lastly death, which was their final end — without ever talking or 

 thinking of penalties, punishments or glory after they were dead. 

 What has been said seems to me sufficient for perceiving that they were 

 materialists. But since they tell a thousand little stories, originating 

 indeed in dreams and deliriums, which manifest the immortality of the 

 soul, and I promised to relate everything that I have acquired on the 



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