trong contrast between the earthly body and the heavenly soul.

4. In fact, rabbinical Judaism does not recognize any relationship between
the soul of the animal and that of man, but claims that man has a special
type of existence. The Midrash tells(648) that God formed Adam's body so
as to reach from earth to heaven, and then caused the soul to enter it. In
the same way God implants the soul into the embryo before its birth and
while in the womb. Before this the soul had a bird-like existence in an
immense celestial cage (_guph_ = _columbarium_), and when it leaves the
body in death, it again takes its flight toward heaven. There its conduct
on earth will reap a reward in the garden of eternal bliss or a punishment
in the infernal regions. The belief in the preexistence of the soul was
shared by the rabbis with the apocryphal authors and Philo.(649)

However, rabbinical Judaism never followed Philo so far in the footsteps
of Plato as to consider the body or the flesh the source of impurity and
sin, or "the prison house of the soul." This view is fundamental in the
Paulinian system of other-worldliness. For the rabbis the sensuous desire
of the body (_yezer_) is a tendency toward sin, but never a compulsion.
The weakness of the flesh may cause a straying from the right path, but
man can turn the desires of the flesh into the service of the good. He can
always assert his divine power of freedom by opposing the evil inclination
(_yezer ha ra_) with the good inclination (_yezer ha tob_) to overcome
it.(650) In fact, the rabbis are so far from acknowledging the existence
of a compulsion of evil in the flesh, that they point to the history of
great men as proof that the highest characters have the mightiest passions
in their souls, and that their greatness consists in the will by which
they have learned to control themselves.(651)

5. In the light of modern science the whole theory separating body and
soul falls to the ground, and the one connecting man more closely with the
animal world is revived. In this connection we think of the idea which
medieval thinkers adopted from Plato and Aristotle, that there is a
substance of souls--_nefesh hahiyonith_--which forms the basic life-force of
men and animals. Physiology and psychology reveal the interaction and
dependence of body and soul in the lowest forms of animal life as well as
in the higher forms, including man. The beginnings of the human mind must
be sought once for all i