ver may lose his life if his
shadow falls on the water, for a crocodile may seize it and draw him
in; in Tasmania, North and South America and classical Europe is
found the conception that the soul--[Greek: skia], _umbra_--is somehow
identical with the shadow of a man. More familiar to the Anglo-Saxon
race is the connexion between the soul and the breath; this
identification is found both in Aryan and Semitic languages; in Latin
we have _spiritus_, in Greek _pneuma_, in Hebrew _ruach_; and the
idea is found extending downwards to the lowest planes of culture in
Australia, America and Asia. For some of the Red Indians the Roman
custom of receiving the breath of a dying man was no mere pious duty
but a means of ensuring that his soul was transferred to a new body.
Other familiar conceptions identify the soul with the liver (see OMEN)
or the heart, with the reflected figure seen in the pupil of the eye,
and with the blood. Although the soul is often distinguished from
the vital principle, there are many cases in which a state of
unconsciousness is explained as due to the absence of the soul; in
South Australia _wilyamarraba_ (without soul) is the word used for
insensible. So too the autohypnotic trance of the magician or _shaman_
is regarded as due to his visit to distant regions or the nether
world, of which he brings back an account. Telepathy or clairvoyance
(_q.v._), with or without trance, must have operated powerfully to
produce a conviction of the dual nature of man, for it seems probable
that facts unknown to the automatist are sometimes discovered by means
of crystal-gazing (_q.v._), which is widely found among savages, as
among civilized peoples. Sickness is often explained as due to the
absence of the soul; and means are sometimes taken to lure back the
wandering soul; when a Chinese is at the point of death and his soul
is supposed to have already left his body, the patient's coat is held
up on a long bamboo while a priest endeavours to bring the departed
spirit back into the coat by means of incantations. If the bamboo
begins to turn round in the hands of the relative who is deputed to
hold it, it is regarded as a sign that the soul of the moribund has
returned (see AUTOMATISM). More important perhaps than all these
phenomena, because more regular and normal, was the daily period of
sleep with its frequent concomitant of fitful and incoherent ideas and
images. The mere immobility of the body was sufficient to s