+17+. The doctrine of the soul is so interwoven with the history of religious beliefs that a brief statement of its early forms will be appropriate before we enter on the consideration of religious institutions and ideas.[18]
+18+. The belief in an interior something in man, different from the body, appears to be practically universal in early human history; the ideas concerning the nature of the soul have changed from time to time, but no tribe of men has yet been found in which it is certain that there is no belief in its existence. The Central Australians, religiously one of the least-developed communities known, believe in ghosts, and a ghost presupposes some sort of substance different from the ordinary body. Of some tribes, as the Pygmies of Central Africa and the Fuegians, we have no exact information on this point. But in all cases in which there is information traces of a belief in a soul are found. We are not concerned here with philosophic views, like that of Buddhism and many modern psychologists, that do not admit the existence of the soul as a separate entity. The proofs of the universality of the belief in a soul are scattered through all books that deal with man's religious constitution and history.[19]
+19+. For the basis of a universal fact of human experience we naturally seek a universal or essential element of human thought. In this case we must assume a natural or instinctive conviction of the existence of an internal life or being--a consciousness (at first doubtless dim and vague) of something diverse and separate from the visible physical being, a sense of mental activity in thought, feeling, and will.
+20+. It is not surprising that we do not meet with the expression of such a consciousness among savages: partly, as is well known, they are like children, intellectually incapable of formulating their instinctive beliefs (and they have, consequently, no word to express such a formulation); partly, they are not disposed to speak frankly on subjects that they regard as sacred or mysterious. Attempts at formulation follow the lines of culture, and it is not till a comparatively late stage that they reach definite shape.
+21+. The interior being, whose existence was vaguely felt, was recognized by early man in many common experiences. Certain phenomena were observed that seemed to be universal accompaniments of life, and these, by a strictly scientific method of procedure, were referred to 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]