Page:Spiritual and Mental Concepts of the Maori.djvu/8

4 experts in such matters. Annandale tells us that the soul is the spiritual and immortal part in man, the immaterial spirit which inhabits the body, the moral and emotional part of man's nature, the seat of the sentiments or feelings, the animating or essential part, the vital principle. Now, in order to cover this range of definition a Maori would mention the wairua, the ngakau or puku, the hinengaro, and the mauri. As to the spirit, the same English authority states that it is the intelligent, immaterial, and immortal part in man; the soul, as distinguished from the body; a spectre, a ghost, &c. Herein "soul" appears as a synonym for "spirit."

The New Oxford Dictionary, the last word in definition, tells us that the spirit is the animating or vital principle in man (and animals)—the breath of life, the soul of a person that leaves the body at death, the disembodied soul of a deceased person, &c. The Maori would employ the terms mauri, manawa ora, and wairua to denote these qualities. The above dictionary defines the soul as the principle of life in man and animals, the principle of thought and action in man, the spiritual part of man, the seat of the emotions, intellectual power, spiritual power; the vital, sensitive, or rational principle in plants, animals, or human beings; the spiritual part of man considered in its moral aspect; the spiritual part of man as surviving after death; the disembodied spirit of a deceased person, &c. To describe these definitions our Maori would use the expressions mauri, mahara, wairua, puku or ngakau, mana, hau, hinengaro, and kehua—truly a goodly array. It will also be noted that, so far as they pertain to the immortal element in man, the two terms are practically synonyms. This means that in any scientific treatise we must either use these expressions indiscriminately, or assign to each a definite meaning. This latter course has been pursued by the writer of the Handbook of Folk-lore, as adopted by the Royal Anthropological Society. In this work the definitions are commendably brief, and are as follows:—

"Soul. The separable personality of the living man, or other being. "Spirit. A soul-like being which has never been associated with a human or animal body. "Ghost. This denotes the soul after the death of its physical basis."

These definitions are pleasingly brief, but that of "spirit" calls for a mental revolution by no means easy to bring about. It would assuredly require prolonged training to disassociate the term "spirit" from man, and confine its use to what we term inanimate objects. The word "spirit" is certainly connected with an animal function—with words meaning breath, breathing, and to breathe—and it seems inadvisable to restrict its application to objects with which that function is not connected.

The above evidence seems to show that, however much those of advanced thought may talk about the tripartite nature of man, as illustrated by spirit, soul, and body, yet to the average person among us spirit and soul are one and the same thing.