n view that revenant souls and Underworld shadows
may assume the form of animals, and the Hindu metempsychosis. A
particular responsible moral soul is also reported (among the
Karens),[70] but it is doubtful whether this is native; and still more
doubtful are the Karen 'reason' (_ts[=o]_) and the Khond beatified
soul.[71]

+41+. In regard to procedure after the man's death, it is generally held
in early stages of culture that one soul stays with the body, or at the
tomb, or in the village, or becomes air, while another departs to the
land of the dead (Fijians, Algonkins, and others), or is reborn
(Khonds), and in some cases a soul is said to vanish.[72]

+42+. It is obvious that there was great flexibility and indefiniteness
in early theories of the soul. The savage mind, feeling its way among
its varied experiences, was disposed to imagine a separate interior
substance to account for anything that seemed to be a separate and
valuable manifestation of the man's personality. The number of souls
varies with the number of phenomena that it was thought necessary to
recognize as peculiar, and the lines of demarcation between different
souls are not always strictly drawn. As to the manner of the souls'
indwelling in the body, and as to their relations one to another,
savages have nothing definite to say, or, at least, have said nothing.
In general our information regarding savage psychical theories is
meager; it is not unlikely that with fuller acquaintance the details
given above would have to be modified, though the general fact of
polypsychism would doubtless remain.

+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 _ru[h.]_ (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 'spiri