ught.[42] Plato
suggests that the brain may be the seat of perception and then of memory
and reflection, and calls the head the most divine part of man.[43]
Cicero reports that some persons looked on some part of the cerebrum as
the chief seat of the mind.[44] In the Semitic languages the first
occurrence of a term for 'brain' is in the Arabic.[45] Some American
tribes are said to regard the brain as the seat of the mind.[46] The
scientific Greek view appears to have been connected with medical
research, but the process by which it was reached has not been recorded.
The Arabic conception of the brain was probably borrowed from the
Greeks.

+29+. The soul as an independent personality was supposed to leave the
body at times, and its departure entailed various consequences--in
general the result was the withdrawal of the man's ordinary powers to a
greater or less extent, according to the duration of the soul's absence.
The consequences might be sleep, trance, swoon, coma, death; the precise
nature of the effect was determined by the man's subsequent
condition--he would wake from sleep, or return to his ordinary state
from a trance, or come to himself from a swoon, or lie permanently
motionless in death. When he seemed to be dead there was often doubt as
to his real condition--the escaped soul might seek its old abode (as in
the case of the vampire, for instance), and means were sometimes taken
to prevent its return.[47]

+30+. The obvious difference in serious results between sleep and other
cessations of the ordinary consciousness and activity led among some
tribes to the supposition of a special dream-soul that could leave the
body without injury to the man. It was believed by certain
Greenlanders[48] that a man going on a journey might leave his soul
behind. It was a not uncommon opinion that souls might be taken out for
a while, with friendly intent, to guard them during a period of danger
(so in Celebes when a family moves into a new house). In Greenland,
according to Cranz, a damaged soul might be repaired. Or the soul might
be removed with evil intent by magic art--the result would be sickness
or swoon; it was then incumbent on the sufferer or his friends to
discover the hostile magician and counteract his work by stronger magic,
or force him to restore the soul.[49] On the other hand, the soul of a
dead man might be so recalled that the man would live again, the usual
agency being a god, a magician, or a prophet