gates of Hades, or ferried across the Styx in the
boat of Charon.(29)

The philosophical mythology, however, that sprang from this name was much
more important. We saw that _Psyche_, meaning originally the breathing of
the body, was gradually used in the sense of vital breath, and as
something independent of the body; and that at last, when it had assumed
the meaning of the immortal part of man, it retained that character of
something independent of the body, thus giving rise to the conception of a
soul, not only as a being without a body, but in its very nature opposed
to body. As soon as that opposition had been established in language and
thought, philosophy began its work in order to explain how two such
heterogeneous powers could act on each other--how the soul could influence
the body, and how the body could determine the soul. Spiritualistic and
materialistic systems of philosophy arose, and all this in order to remove
a self-created difficulty, in order to join together again what language
had severed, the living body and the living soul. The question whether
there is a soul or spirit, whether there is in man something different
from the mere body, is not at all affected by this mythological
phraseology. We certainly can distinguish between body and soul, but as
long as we keep within the limits of human knowledge, we have no right to
speak of the living soul as a breath, or of spirits and ghosts as
fluttering about like birds or fairies. The poet of the nineteenth century
says:--

"The spirit does but mean the breath,
I know no more."

And the same thought was expressed by Cicero two thousand years ago:
"Whether the soul is air or fire, I do not know." As men, we only know of
embodied spirits, however ethereal their bodies may be conceived to be,
but of spirits, separate from body, without form or frame, we know as
little as we know of thought without language, or of the Dawn as a
goddess, or of the Night as the mother of the Day.

Though breath, or spirit, or ghost are the most common names that were
assigned through the metaphorical nature of language to the vital, and
afterwards to the intellectual, principle in man, they were by no means
the only possible names. We speak, for instance, of the _shades_ of the
departed, which meant originally their shadows. Those who first introduced
this expression--and we find it in the most distant parts of the
world(30)--evidently took the shadow as the ne