[43]. In the higher ancient religions there are only more or less obscure indications of an earlier polypsychic system. The Egyptian distinction between soul (bai), shadow (haibet), and double (ka) appears to involve such a system; but the Egyptologists of the present day are not agreed as to the precise interpretation of these terms.[73] The Semitic terms nafs and ruḥ (commonly rendered 'soul' and 'spirit' respectively) are of similar origin, both meaning 'wind,' 'breath'; in the literature they are sometimes used in the same sense, sometimes differentiated. The 'soul' is the seat of life, appetite, feeling, thought—when it leaves the body the man swoons or dies; it alone is used as a synonym of personality (a 'soul' often means simply a 'person'). 'Spirit,' while it sometimes signifies the whole nature, is also employed (like English 'spirit') to express the tone of mind, especially courage, vigor. But, so far as the conception of an interior being is concerned, the two terms are substantially identical in the Semitic languages as known to us.[74] And though, as is noted above, 'spirit' is not used for the human personality, it alone is the term in Hebrew for a class of subordinate supernatural beings standing in close relations with the deity.[75] Greek literature seems to know only one personal soul (psyche, with which pneuma is often identical in meaning); a quality of nature (as in Semitic ruḥ) is sometimes expressed by pneuma ('spirit').[76] The thymos appears in Homer to be merely a function of the psyche,[77] in any case it does not represent a separate personality alongside of the psyche, and the same thing is true of the daimon. Similarly, in Latin, animus and anima are substantially synonyms[78]—animus sometimes expressing tone of mind—and spiritus is equivalent to ruḥ and pneuma; the individual genius, with its feminine representative the juno, is a complicated and obscure figure, but it cannot be regarded as a separate soul.[79]
[44]. This variety of terms in the more advanced religions may point to an early polypsychic conception. The tendency was, with the progress of culture, to modify or efface this sort of conception.[80] From a belief in a number of entities in the human interior being men passed to a recognition of different sides or aspects of the inward life, and finally to the distinct conception of the oneness of the soul. The movement toward psychic unity may be compared with the movement toward monotheism by the unification of the phenomena of the external world.
4. Future of the Soul
[45]. Savage philosophy, recognizing the dual nature of man, regarded death as due to the departure of the soul from the body. The cessation of breathing at death was matter of common observation, and the obvious inference was that the breath, the vital soul, had left the body. Reflection on this fact naturally led to the question, Whither has the soul gone?
[46]. Death of the soul. The general belief has always been that the soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead man must submit to the universal law to which the living are subject.[82] In another African community some held and others denied that a spirit could be killed, and one man was certain that spirits lived long, but was not certain whether they ever died.[83] Differences of opinion in regard to the fact of immortality are said to exist in Banks Islands.[84] The Eskimos are reported as holding that the soul may be destroyed, and then, however, repaired.[85]
[47]. It thus appears that even among low tribes there is speculation on the question of the continuance of existence after earthly death; there is admission of ignorance. We have, however, examples of a definite belief in annihilation. In some cases, when the theory of several souls is held,[86] one of these souls is supposed to become extinct at death: this is the case with the Malagasy saina, and the 'beast-soul' among the Eẃe, Tshi, and Congoans; but such a soul represents only a part of the man, and its disappearance does not signify the extinction of the man's personality.
[48]. Complete extinction of the soul and the personality, in the case of certain persons, is found among the Fijians: in the long and difficult way to the Underworld, bachelors (as a rule), untattooed women, false boasters, and those men who failed to overcome in combat the "slayer of souls" (the god Sama) are killed and eaten.[87] Something like this is reported of the Hervey Islands,[88] New Zealand,[89] the Hawaiians,[90] and other tribes. Among the wild tribes of India, the Khonds and the Oraons, or Dhangars, hold to annihilation of the soul in certain cases.[91] Miss Kingsley reports a specially interesting view in Congo to the effect that souls die when the family dies out.[92] The ground of this sense of the solidarity of the living and the dead is not clear; the most obvious explanation is that the latter get their sustenance from the offerings of the former, and perhaps from their prayers; such prayers, according to W. Ellis,[93] are made in Polynesia. This belief appears also in some advanced peoples: so the Egyptians,[94] and apparently the Hindus.[95]
[49]. In these cases no explanation is offered of how a soul can die. Earthly death is the separation of the soul from the body, and by analogy the death of a soul should involve a disruption of constituents, but the savage imagination appears to have passed lightly over this point: when a soul is eaten, it is destroyed as the human body is destroyed when it is eaten; if it is drowned or clubbed, it dies as a man does under similar treatment. The soul is conceived of as an independent personality, with a corporeal form and mental powers; the psychic body, it would seem, is endowed with power of thought.[96]
[50]. This vagueness of conception enables us to understand how savage logic reaches the conclusion that the soul may be mortal: all the possibilities of the earthly person are transferred to it. In regard to the occasion of its death, it is sometimes represented as punishment for violation of tribal customs (as in Fiji), sometimes as the natural fate of inferior classes of persons (as among the Tongans, who are said to believe that only chiefs live after death),[97] sometimes as a simple destruction by human agency.
[51]. In the popular faith of the Semitic, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indo-European peoples there is no sign of an extinction of the personality after earthly death. The Babylonian dead all go to the vast and gloomy Underworld (Aralu), where their food is dust, and whence there is no return.[98] The Old-Hebrew 'soul' (nephesh) continues to exist in Sheol. True, its life is a colorless one, without achievement, without hope, and without religious worship; yet it has the marks of personality.[99] The fortunes of the spirit (ruḥ), when it denotes not merely a quality of character but an entity, are identical with those of the 'soul.'[100] In India, belief in life after death has always been held by the masses, and philosophic systems conceive of absorption, not of extinction proper. Zoroastrianism had, and has, a well-developed doctrine of immortality, and the Egyptian conception of the future was equally elaborate. In China the cult of ancestors does not admit belief in annihilation.[101] No theory of annihilation is found in connection with the Greek and Latin 'soul' and 'spirit' (psyche, pneuma; animus, anima, spiritus); the thymos is not a separate entity, but only an expression of the 'soul';[102] and the Greek daimon and the Latin genius are too vague to come into consideration in this connection.[103]