ABSTRACT
Ethnology and the history of religion tell of numerous peoples who used the same word for “breath” and for “soul”. As instances may be mentioned peoples as widely separated in time and space as the primitive Australians and the Ainu of Japan on the one hand, the ancient Hebrews and different Aryan peoples of Europe and India on the other. The free-soul, however, is the form which plays the most important role in the psychology of the lower peoples, and it is the one particularly named. The soul’s existence after its separation from the body and the possibility of its assuming, some time in the future, a new human form, an idea prevalent among many peoples, depends on the degree of integrity with which the dead body is preserved. Hence, for instance, the care with which the ancient Egyptians embalmed the corpses of the dead.
