Early Evolution of Religion

86:5.1The non­ma­te­rial part of man has been var­i­ously termed ghost, spirit, shade, phan­tom, specter, and lat­terly soul. The soul was early man’s dream dou­ble; it was in ev­ery way ex­actly like the mor­tal him­self ex­cept that it was not re­spon­sive to touch. The be­lief in dream dou­bles led di­rectly to the no­tion that all things an­i­mate and inan­i­mate had souls as well as men. This con­cept tended long to per­pet­u­ate the na­ture-spirit be­liefs; the Es­ki­mos still con­ceive that ev­ery­thing in na­ture has a spirit.

86:5.2The ghost soul could be heard and seen, but not touched. Grad­u­ally the dream life of the race so de­vel­oped and ex­panded the ac­tiv­i­ties of this evolv­ing spirit world that death was fi­nally re­garded as “giv­ing up the ghost.” All prim­i­tive tribes, ex­cept those lit­tle above an­i­mals, have de­vel­oped some con­cept of the soul. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, this su­per­sti­tious con­cept of the soul is de­stroyed, and man is wholly de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion and per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence for his new idea of the soul as the joint cre­ation of the God-know­ing mor­tal mind and its in­dwelling di­vine spirit, the Thought Ad­juster.

86:5.3Early mor­tals usu­ally failed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the con­cepts of an in­dwelling spirit and a soul of evo­lu­tion­ary na­ture. The sav­age was much con­fused as to whether the ghost soul was na­tive to the body or was an ex­ter­nal agency in pos­ses­sion of the body. The ab­sence of rea­soned thought in the pres­ence of per­plex­ity ex­plains the gross in­con­sis­ten­cies of the sav­age view of souls, ghosts, and spir­its.

86:5.4The soul was thought of as be­ing re­lated to the body as the per­fume to the flower. The an­cients be­lieved that the soul could leave the body in var­i­ous ways, as in:

86:5.51. Or­di­nary and tran­sient faint­ing.

86:5.62. Sleep­ing, nat­u­ral dream­ing.

86:5.73. Coma and un­con­scious­ness as­so­ci­ated with dis­ease and ac­ci­dents.

86:5.84. Death, per­ma­nent de­par­ture.

86:5.9The sav­age looked upon sneez­ing as an abortive at­tempt of the soul to es­cape from the body. Be­ing awake and on guard, the body was able to thwart the soul’s at­tempted es­cape. Later on, sneez­ing was al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by some re­li­gious ex­pres­sion, such as “God bless you!”

86:5.10Early in evo­lu­tion sleep was re­garded as prov­ing that the ghost soul could be ab­sent from the body, and it was be­lieved that it could be called back by speak­ing or shout­ing the sleeper’s name. In other forms of un­con­scious­ness the soul was thought to be far­ther away, per­haps try­ing to es­cape for good—im­pend­ing death. Dreams were looked upon as the ex­pe­ri­ences of the soul dur­ing sleep while tem­porar­ily ab­sent from the body. The sav­age be­lieves his dreams to be just as real as any part of his wak­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. The an­cients made a prac­tice of awak­ing sleep­ers grad­u­ally so that the soul might have time to get back into the body.

86:5.11All down through the ages men have stood in awe of the ap­pari­tions of the night sea­son, and the He­brews were no ex­cep­tion. They truly be­lieved that God spoke to them in dreams, de­spite the in­junc­tions of Moses against this idea. And Moses was right, for or­di­nary dreams are not the meth­ods em­ployed by the per­son­al­i­ties of the spir­i­tual world when they seek to com­mu­ni­cate with ma­te­rial be­ings.

86:5.12The an­cients be­lieved that souls could en­ter an­i­mals or even inan­i­mate ob­jects. This cul­mi­nated in the were­wolf ideas of an­i­mal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. A per­son could be a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen by day, but when he fell asleep, his soul could en­ter a wolf or some other an­i­mal to prowl about on noc­tur­nal depre­da­tions.

86:5.13Prim­i­tive men thought that the soul was as­so­ci­ated with the breath, and that its qual­i­ties could be im­parted or trans­ferred by the breath. The brave chief would breathe upon the new­born child, thereby im­part­ing cour­age. Among early Chris­tians the cer­e­mony of be­stow­ing the Holy Spirit was ac­com­pa­nied by breath­ing on the can­di­dates. Said the Psalmist: “By the word of the Lord were the heav­ens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” It was long the cus­tom of the el­dest son to try to catch the last breath of his dy­ing fa­ther.

86:5.14The shadow came, later on, to be feared and revered equally with the breath. The re­flec­tion of one­self in the wa­ter was also some­times looked upon as proof of the dou­ble self, and mir­rors were re­garded with su­per­sti­tious awe. Even now many civ­i­lized per­sons turn the mir­ror to the wall in the event of death. Some back­ward tribes still be­lieve that the mak­ing of pic­tures, draw­ings, mod­els, or im­ages re­moves all or a part of the soul from the body; hence such are for­bid­den.

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.

86:5.16Those who held the doc­trine of three or four souls be­lieved that the loss of one soul meant dis­com­fort, two ill­ness, three death. One soul lived in the breath, one in the head, one in the hair, one in the heart. The sick were ad­vised to stroll about in the open air with the hope of re­cap­tur­ing their strayed souls. The great­est of the med­i­cine men were sup­posed to ex­change the sick soul of a dis­eased per­son for a new one, the “new birth.”

86:5.17The chil­dren of Bado­nan de­vel­oped a be­lief in two souls, the breath and the shadow. The early Nod­ite races re­garded man as con­sist­ing of two per­sons, soul and body. This phi­los­o­phy of hu­man ex­is­tence was later re­flected in the Greek view­point. The Greeks them­selves be­lieved in three souls; the veg­e­ta­tive resided in the stom­ach, the an­i­mal in the heart, the in­tel­lec­tual in the head. The Es­ki­mos be­lieve that man has three parts: body, soul, and name.