Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/423



When I read that according to the observation of Mr. So and So the same word is used among a certain people for breath, shadow, ghost, and soul, I do not conclude that the observer in question is wrong. Neither, however, am I led to suppose that these four distinct ideas are one in the mind of those people. I know how hard it is for an observer of primitive, arrested, or degraded people's thoughts to get at their real meaning; and I know that in some cases one word may stand for four distinct ideas. Even in the country in which I live, although the white man has been here over four hundred years, I doubt if there are many who could enter on this subject with any