8 LIFE AND DEATH. 



human mind. But in so far as it is a co-ordinated 

 doctrine, it is the most recent. In fact it only 

 received its definitive expression in the eighteenth 

 century, from Stahl, the philosopher-physician and 

 chemist. 



According to Tylor, one of the first speculations of 

 primitive man, of the savage, is as to the difference 

 between the living body and the corpse. The former 

 is an inhabited house, the latter is empty. To such 

 rudimentary intellects the mysterious inhabitant is a 

 kind of double or duplicate of the human form. It is 

 only revealed by the shadow which follows the body 

 when illuminated by the sun, by the image of its 

 reflection in the water, by the echo which repeats the 

 voice. It is only seen in a dream, and the figures 

 which people and animate our dreams are nothing 

 but these doubled, impalpable beings. Some savages 

 believe that at the moment of death the double, or 

 the soul, takes up its residence in another body. 

 Sometimes each individual possesses, not one of these 

 souls, but several. According to Maspero, the 

 Egyptians counted at least five, of which the 

 principle, the ka or double, would be the aeriform or 

 vaporous image of the living form. Space is peopled 

 by souls on their travels, which leave one set of bodies 

 to occupy another set. After having been the cause 

 of life in the bodies which they animated, they 

 react from without on other beings, and are the 

 cause of all sorts of unexpected events. They are 

 benevolent or malevolent spirits. 



Analogy inevitably leads simple minds to extend 

 the same ideas to animals and plants ; in a word, to 

 attribute souls to everything alive, souls more or less 

 nomadic, wandering, or interchangeable, as is taught 



