? and whence will it
come?

CHAPTER XIII

THE SEPARABLE SOUL IN FOLKLORE

Belief in a separable soul in man is virtually universal. Such belief is
found amongst the lowest races, and in the few instances where it has not
been clearly discovered it is admitted that it may still exist and be
disguised by the native meaning of words or signs that escape the
explorer.

The universality of this belief has often been urged as an evidence of its
validity and proof of the soul's existence.

Modern physical science deduces this belief from the phenomena of daily
life and the analogies of individual experience, thus giving precedence to
material causes for mental concepts, or universal ideas. This view is, I
think, entitled to the most careful consideration, but it cannot once for
all be admitted, nor is it consistent with the general theory and progress
of evolution that the phenomenal stands to the noumenal, the actual to the
ideal, as cause to effect. These two groups of experiences are alternate
and coincident; and, as to priority, it is only the old question in a new
form, as to which was first, the bird that laid the egg, or the egg that
hatched the bird.

This distinction is particularly pertinent to the present subject, for the
reason that by the method of modern physical science, in dealing with the
belief in the existence of the soul, the whole of this universal belief is
swept away. Its origin is found in the ignorance, superstition, and false
analogies of barbarous races, and the inference is that the belief can
only linger as a remnant of superstition among civilized men. This method
prejudges the whole question, and (while it must readily be admitted that
the opposite method equally prejudges it), my contention is for neither
the one nor the other, but for the careful consideration and final
blending of both. If at first sight these two theories, which form the
basis of the working hypothesis of the materialist and the spiritist, seem
paradoxical and wholly irreconcilable, with careful consideration and
unbiased investigation of both sides of the problem the paradox will
disappear.

With both the lowest and the highest races not only do we find the
existence of belief in the existence of a separable soul in man, but of
ghosts, gods, genii, a spirit of the air, and hierarchies of celestial and
infernal beings.

In this regard, philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras, the intellectual
giants of the h