Sept. 5, 1884.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



191 



" I thought God took away my breath to heaven." 

 Among the higher languages the same evidence abides. 

 " The spirit doth but mean the breath." 



That word spirit is derived from a verb spirare, which 

 means "to draw breath ;" Animus, "the mind," is cognate 

 with anima, "air;" in Irish, which belongs to the same 

 family of speech as Latin, namely, the Aryan or Indo- 

 European, we have anaJ, "breath," and anam, "life," or 

 " soul ; " and in Sanskrit, which is the oldest member of 

 that family, or has, at least, best preserved the primitive 

 forms, we tind the root an, to "blow " or " breathe," whence 

 anila, " wind," and in Greek anemos, with the like mean- 

 ing. The Greek psyche, pneuvia, and thymos, each mean- 

 ing " soul " and " spirit," are from roots expressing the 

 wind or breath. In Slavonic the root du has developed the 

 meaning of breath into that of soul or spirit, and the dialect 

 of the gipsies have duk with the meanings of breath, spirit, 

 ghost. That word ghost, the German geist, the Dutch geest, 

 from a root meaning to blow with violence, is connected with 

 gv^t, gas, geyser, in Scandinavian, glosor, " to pour forth." 

 In non - Aryan languages, as the Finnish, far means 

 " soul, breath, spirit, wind " ; henki, " spirit, person, breath, 

 air " ; the Hebrew nephesli, " breath," has also the meanings 

 of " life, soul, mind," and rnach and neshamah, to which 

 the Arabic 7iefs and ruh correspond, pass from meaning 

 "breath" to "spirit." The legend of man's creation 

 records that he became a living soul through the breathing 

 of God into his nostrils " the breath of life," and concerning 

 this the Psalmist says of all that live, " Thou takest away 

 their breath, they die, and return unto the dust. As a 

 final illustration, the Egyptian k7ieph has the alternative 

 meanings of " life " and " breath."* 



When we pass from names to descriptions, we find the 

 same underlying idea of the ethereal nature of spirit. The 

 natives of Nicaragua, California, and other countries 

 remote from these, agree in describing the other self as air 

 or breeze, which passes in and out through the mouth and 

 nostrils. The Tongans conceived it as the aeriform part of 

 the body, related to it as the perfume to the flower. The 

 Greenlanders describe it as pale and soft, as without flesh 

 and bone, so that he who tries to seize it grasps nothing. 

 The Congo negroes leave the house of the dead unswept for 

 a year, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of 

 the ghost ; and the German peasants have a saying that a 

 door should not be slammed, lest a soul gets pinched in it. 

 In some parts of Northern Europe, when the wind-god, 

 Odin, rides the sky with his furious spectral host, the 

 peasants open the windows of every sick-room that the 

 soul of the dying may have free exit to join the wild chase ; 

 whilst both here and in France it is still no uncommon 

 practice to open doors and windows that the soul may 

 depart quickly. Dr. Tylorf cites a passage from Hampole's 

 " Ay en bite of Inwyt," i.e., "Remorse of Conscience," a 

 poem of the fourteenth century, in which the author 

 speaks of the intenser suflering which the soul undergoes 

 in purgatory by reason of its delicate organisation. 



The soul is more teudre and nesche (soft) 

 Than the bodi that hath bones and fleysche ; 

 Thanne the soul that is so tendere of kinde, 

 Mote nedis hure penaunce hardere-y-finde, 

 Than eni bodi that evere on live was, 



* Jacob Grimm remarks that whilst the more palpable breath, 

 as spirit, is masculine, the living;, life-givin<f soul is treated as a 

 delicate feminine essence. Sold is the Icelandic S':la^ German 

 seele, Gothic saiwala, akin to saivs, which means " the sea." Saivs 

 is from a root, si, or sir, the Greek seio, to shake, and this choice 

 of the word saivala may indicate that the ancient Teutons conceived 

 of the soul "as a sea within, heaving up and down with every 

 breath, and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep." 



t " Prim. Culture," I., 412. 



a doctrine clearly due to Patiistic theories of incorporeal 

 souls. And a modern poet, Dante Rossetti, in his "Bles!:ed 

 Damozel," when he describes her as leaning out from the 

 gold bar of heaven and looking down towards the earth, 

 spinning like a fretful midge, whence she awaits the coming 

 of her lover, depicts the souls mounting u]) to God as 

 passing by her "like thin flames." The Greeks and, 

 following them, the Romans, conceived the soul as of thin, 

 impalpable texture, as exhaled with the dying breath, or, a» 

 in Homer, rushing out through the wound that causes the 

 warrior's death. In the metaphysical Arabian romance of 

 Yokdhan, the hero seeks the source of life and thought, 

 and discovers in one of the cavities of the heart a bluish 

 vapour, which was the living soul. Among the Hebrews 

 it was of shadowy nature, with echoless motion, haunting a 

 ghostly realm : 



It is a land of shadows ; yea, the land 



Itself is but a shadow, and the race 



That dwell therein are voices, forms of forms. 



Such conceptions are but little varied ; and, to this day, 

 the intelligence of the major number of people who think 

 about the thing at all presents the departing soul as some- 

 thing vaporous, as a little white cloud. 



In keeping with such ideas, the belief in transfer of spirit 

 expresses itself. Algonkin women who desired to become 

 mothers flocked to the couch of those about to die, in hope 

 that the vital principle as it passed from the body would 

 enter theirs. Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a 

 woman died in childbirth, the infant was held over her 

 face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength 

 and knowledge for its future use. So among the Takahiis, 

 the priest is accustomed to lay his hand on the head of the 

 nearest relative of the deceased, and to blow into him the 

 soul of the departed, which is supposed to come to life in 

 his next child.* 



In Harland and Wilkinson's " Lancashire Folk-lore," it 

 is related that while a well-known witch lay dying, " she- 

 must needs, before she could ' shuflle oflf this mortal coU,' 

 transfer her familiar spirit to some trusty successor. Ad 

 intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring township was 

 consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was 

 immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed 

 between them has never fully transpired, but it is asserted 

 that at the close of the interview this associate received the 

 icitch^s last breath into her mouth, and n-ith it her familiar 

 spirit. The powers for good or evil of the dreaded woman 

 were thus transferred to her companion, and on passing 

 along the road from Burnley to Blackburn we can point 

 out a farmhouse at no great distance, with whose thrifty 

 matron no neighbouring fanner will yet dare to quarrel." 

 When a Roman lay at the point of death, his nearest 

 relative inhaled the last breath ; in New Testament story, 

 the risen Jesus breathes on his disciples, that they may 

 receive the Holy Spirit, and the form thus adopted in con- 

 ferring supernatural grace is still used in the rites and 

 ceremonies of the Catholic Church. 



Speculation about the other self could not, however, 

 stop at identifying it with a man's breath or shadow, or 

 with regarding it as absolutely impalpable. These nebulous 

 and gaseous theories necessarily condensed, as it were, into 

 theories of semi substantiality still charged with ethereal 

 conceptions, but giving embodiment to the soul to account 

 for the appearances of both dead and living in dreams, 

 when their persons were clasped, their forms and features 

 seen, and their voices heard. 



Such theories involve a kind of continuity of identity, 

 and often take the form of belief in the soul as a replica 



* Brinton, p. 271. 



