nowledge, the organ that feels and wills during
waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been
regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital
principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul
substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be
felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt
in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic
peoples as the places where the substance of life could leave or enter
the body.

It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread
than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the
"vital essence" to and from the skull.

In his lecture on "The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,"[70] Professor
John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions of the
soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word [Greek:
psyche] meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean _courage_ in the
first place, and secondly the _breath of life_, the presence or absence
of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate and the
inanimate, the "ghost" which a man "gives up" at death. But it may also
quit the body temporarily, which explains the phenomenon of swooning
([Greek: lipopsychia]). It seemed natural to suppose it was also the
thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep, and even appear to
another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover, since we can dream of
the dead, what then appears to us must be just what leaves the body at
the moment of death. These considerations explain the world-wide belief
in the "soul" as a sort of double of the real bodily man, the Egyptian
_ka_,[71] the Italian _genius_, and the Greek [Greek: psyche].

Now this double is not identical with whatever it is in us that feels
and wills during our waking life. That is generally supposed to be blood
and not breath.

What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart: they belong to
the body and perish with it.

* * * * *

It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
consciousness returns to them for a while.

At one time the [Greek: psyche] was supposed to dwell with the body in
the grave, where it had to be supported by the offe