Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/271

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The Final Philosophy of the Veda 255

ﬂares up in many parts of the World. We hear of

it among the Egyptians and the Celts, but it has developed most signiﬁcantly among the Greeks and Hindus. Its wide vogue is due to a fusion of some of the simplest observations and reasonings about life and death, such as can scarcely fail to come to the mind of primitive man. It is pure folk-«lore. Three snppositions are required for this belief :

First, man has a soul, separate and separable from the body.

Secondly, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects similarly have souls.

Thirdly, all these souls can change their habita- tions.

The belief that man has a soul depends in the main upon two observations: First, breath of life and its cessation after death. Life’s breath is con- strued by primitive observers as an entity which lives with the living body and leaves it at death. When life’s breath departs, the soul departs. Sec- ondly, intercourse of the living with the dead con- tinues in dreams and hallucinations. This shows that the dead after all exist. Primitive man does not recognise illusions.

The belief in animal and plant souls, and even

of Relzlgiamgerclzz'c/zz‘h’cﬂ: Valkséﬁcﬂer, edited by Professor F riederich Michael Schiele), Halle- a. 8. I904.