320 Life and Immortatty. 
things.. It penetrates where weshemet cl cannot penetrate, but 
when speaking of the motivity and sustentation of organized 
dust, or souls, they co-exist with them, the Ruach Elohim 
becoming the rwach chayim, or spirit of lives; the neshemet el, 
the neshemcet chayim, or breath of lives, and both together in 
the elaboration and support of life, the zeshemet ruach chayim, 
or breath of the spirit of lives. Living creatures, or souls, are 
not animated, as is erroneously supposed, by a vital principle 
which is capable of disembodied existence. On the contrary, 
souls are made living by the coetaneous operation of the 
ruach chayim and the neshemet chayim upon their organized 
tissues according to certain fixed laws, called natural laws. 
When the as yet occult laws of the all-pervading ruach, or 
spirit, shall be made known, men will be astonished at their 
ignorance respecting living souls, as we are at the notion of 
the ancients that their immortal gods resided in the stocks 
and the stones they so ignorantly worshipped. 
Though lent to the creatures of the natural world for the 
allotted period of their living existence, yet the ruach chayim 
and neshemet chayim are still God’s breath and God’s spirit, 
and to distinguish them from the expanse of air and spirit 
in their totality, they are sometimes specifically styled “ the 
spirit of man” and “the spirit of the beast,” or collectively 
“the spirits of all flesh,” and “their breath.” Thus it is 
written in Ecclesiastes, “they have all ove ruach, or spirit, 
so that man hath no preéminence over a beast; for all is 
vanity or vapor.” “ All go to one place; all are of the dust, 
and all turn to dust again.” And in the sense of supplying 
to every living creature, or soul, spirit and breath, Jehovah 
is styled by Moses in the book of Numbers,—“ God of the 
spirits of all flesh.” 
Enough has been advanced to show the Scriptural import 
of the text already quoted, that “ the Lord God formed man, 
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of lives; and man became a living soul.” The sim- 
ple, obvious and undogmatic meaning of this is, that the 
