an
inward living thing. It was hardly possible for early observers not to
notice that when the breath ceased the life ceased; hence many peoples
have regarded the breath as the life, and as the form of the interior
being, and in many languages the words for 'soul' and 'spirit' are
derived from the word for 'breath'.[20] The breath and therefore the
soul of a dying man might be received (inhaled) by any person present;
it was sometimes obligatory on a son to receive his father's last
breath--he thereby acquired the father's qualities.[21]

+22+. Another accompaniment of the body that attracted the attention of
early men was the shadow, for which the science of that day,
unacquainted with optical laws, could account only on the supposition
that it was a double of the man, another self, a something belonging in
the same general category with the breath-soul, though usually
distinguished from it.[22] The shadow was regarded as a sort of
independent objective being, which might be seized and destroyed, for
example, by a crocodile, as the man passed along a river bank; yet, as
it was the man, its destruction involved the man's death.[23] The soul,
regarded as a shadow, could not cast a shadow. Similarly one's
reflection in water was regarded as a double of him.[24]

+23+. Blood was known by observation in very early times to be
intimately connected with life, acquired the mystery and sacredness that
attached to life, and has played a great part in religious
ceremonies.[25] As soul is life, a close relation between blood and soul
appears in the thought of lower and higher peoples, though the relation
is not always the same as that described above. The blood is sometimes
said to be the soul,[26] sometimes the soul is supposed to be in the
blood as it is in the hair or any other part of the body. Blood could
not be regarded as the soul in the same sense in which the breath, for
example, was the soul--if the breath departed the man's life departed,
but one could lose much blood without injury to vital power. It is not
to be expected that the relation between the two should be precisely
defined in the early stages of society. If Homer at one time speaks of
the soul passing away through a wound and at another time of the blood
so passing (death being the result),[27] this variation must not be
pressed into a statement of the exact identity of blood and soul. By the
Californian Maidu the soul is spoken of as a 'heart', apparently