HUMAN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 85 



mobile fancy of primitive men, and also of savage 

 and ignorant peoples in our day. 



Just as the act of respiration is a faint wind 

 which goes on whether in sleep or wakefulness, and 

 only ceases with death, so it was with the pheno- 

 menon of nature which attracted their attention, and 

 it was invested by them with life. Since the winds 

 of nature had already been animated and personified 

 by a spontaneous act, so our inmost being was cer- 

 tainly first considered as material, and impersonated 

 as breath and air. 



This appears from the roots and words of all 

 languages ; the Hebrew nephesli, nshamdh, ruach soul 

 or spirit are all derived from the idea of breathing. 

 The Greek word avtjuoc, the Latin word animus, 

 signify breathing, wind, soul, and spirit. In the 

 Sanscrit utman we have the successive meanings 

 which show the evolution of the myth : breathing, 

 vital soul, intelligence, and then the individual, the 

 ego. In Polynesia we find the same process of things. 

 To think, which in the Aryan tongues comes from 

 the root c'i, and originally meant to collect, to com- 

 prehend, in German, begreifen, becomes in the Poly- 

 nesian language, to talk in the bclh/. It is, there- 

 fore, an evident historical fact that man first per- 

 sonified natural phenomena, and then made use of 

 these personifications to personify his inward acts, 

 his psychical ideas and conceptions. This was the 

 necessary process, since animals were prior to man, 



