Language. 927 



From a common root are derived the Latin ango, to choke or throttle; 

 angina, the quinsy; angor, pain, vexation; anxius, thoughtful ; and the 

 English anxious, anguish, anger; all applicable to mental states, the pri- 

 mary sense being to press or squeeze. The Greek name for spirit, pneuma, 

 is that which also means wind, blast, a tempest, &c. Hence it was used 

 to signify breath, then life, then mind, then inspiration; and when it was 

 necessary to have a word to designate the third person of the Christian 

 Trinity, He was called the Holy Pneuma. John 4: 24, Pneuma o Theos. 

 "God is a Spirit." Likewise in the old testament the Hebrew ruach, 

 wind, is used to signify the Spirit of God. It is thus used in the second verse 

 of Genesis, while in verse 8 of chapter 3, le ruach haiyom (evening breeze) 

 is rendered in our version, " cool of the day. " 



The American Indians had a pretty general belief in a future state, 

 and an immortal part or soul. This soul some thought was in the bone, 

 and their word for soul corresponded with that idea. In the Iroquois 

 language, esken is bone and atisken soul, that is, that which is within 

 the bone. In an Athapascan dialect, yani means bone, and i-yune 

 is soul. The Lower Pend d' Oreilles were destitute of any idea of 

 future state, spiritual existence or anything of the kind, and therefore 

 had no word for soul. When the Catholic Missionaries undertook to 

 teach them Christianity it was necessary to clothe the conception of 

 soul in such language as they could understand, drawn from material 

 things. The half-breed interpreters solved the difficulty by telling them 

 they had a gut that never would rot! This is a sufficiently materalistic 

 dress in which to put the conception, but after all, the names given to it by 

 more cultivated races, are equally those of material things. In the 

 Aztec and related languages, ehecatl means wind, and also shadow and 

 soul. Among the New England tribes, chemung meant both shadow and 

 soul, and in the Quiche, of Central America, natul meant the same 

 things, and so did the word tarnak in the Eskimo tongue. In the 

 Mohawk, atonrion means to breathe, and atonritz stands for soul. 1 



In the Welsh language is the word cas which signifies to separate, to 

 drive off. From this signification it passes in Welsh to mean also to 

 defend, a castle, hatred and envy, also hateful and odious ; casnawr, a 

 hater, a persecutor ; casnori, to persecute, to chase. In English, from 

 the same root come cast, to throw or to pour, guess, gust, gush, gas, 

 aghast( ?), ghastly, ghost. There are also many words from the same 

 root in other European languages. Thus a guess is something thrown 

 together, and the word preserves the same idea of it that is contained 

 in the word conjecture, from the Latin conjicio, to throw together. In 

 gush and gust the idea of pouring forth and passing is expressed, and 

 in gas and ghost this idea is but little modified. By apparition is meant 

 See Brinton's Myths of the New World, p. 234. 



