Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/367

 366 D. G. RITCHIE I a very simple question : " Is the soul according to this view a substance or is it not ? If it is not a substance, it is illo- gical to hold any doctrine of immortality. The Materialist makes soul a mere function of body ; the Idealist regards it only as the subject of knowledge, and holds the eternity of thought but cannot hold the immortality of the soul." Let us ask what is meant by calling the soul a substance ? Sub- stance in its simplest meaning is nothing more than that which has qualities, the permanent subject of which we can predicate attributes. But probably most persons who use the word substance about the soul only mean by it reality. Primitive man did not regard soul as substance. Rather the body was thought of as the real self or person, the soul, spirit or ghost being only a sort of shadow or emanation given off by him. Because the dead and absent appeared in dreams, the appear- ance was supposed to be some emanation from the person. The ghost had a less real existence than the man while liv- ing; and there were ghosts or souls of other animals and even of things. We have good examples of this primitive ' Animism ' in the Homeric poems. The slain warriors tliemselves are a prey to dogs and birds, while their spirits are sent to Hades. 1 With Plato this is completely changed. Socrates is asked how they shall bury him. " You cannot bury me. Only my body will remain. I shall go away " {Phaedo, 115). The spirits whom Odysseus visits have a very feeble and shadowy existence, not, as Plato puts it, a more real and true existence than men living on earth, so that the life of the wise man becomes "a practising of death" (Phaedo, 64 A). This Animism of course still survives in the co-exis- tence of a belief that the ghosts of the dead flit about near graves and their old haunts (cp. Pliaedo, 81 C, D ; Laws, 865 D), along with the idea that their souls are in another world. The differentiation of the words ' soul ' and ' ghost ' (-^rvywv a-KtoeiBrj M, a v T o v s 8( eXwpta Tfi( KVVT(TIV oicavoio'i re iraai. xvi. 856, xxii. 362 : &S upa fjiiv ftTTovra TOS Qavaroio KoXvfyf. ^vr] 8' (K pfdfU>v irrap.tv7) *Ai'8o<r8e ftffirjKfi ov Ti-arpov yooaxra, rovcr' dBporiJTa KOI rj^rjv, TOV KOL Tfdvficora 7rpoo"r]vSa 8los '