one and the same undivided, indivisible self which does all this. The consciousness of this indivisible unity, a unity of which the body is incapable, is the same in the savage and the philosopher. It is a primitive, universal, and necessary conviction. The body dissolves at death, but the self within the body is indissoluble. It continues one and the same through all the changes of life, and therefore will continue, men believe, after the physical body dies. Primitive man does not argue in this way, and convince himself thus of his immortality; but the belief is the natural outgrowth of his self-consciousness.

§ 2. Double souls and a double consciousness. Any proof of this?

Some eminent thinkers, however, take a different view. They tell us that the man who sleeps and dreams thinks he has two individualities, one of which leaves the other in his sleep, and comes back to it again when he wakes.

Schoolcraft reports that "the North American Indians believe in duplicate souls, one of which remains with the body, while the other departs during sleep." But this is surely a misinterpretation of their idea. There is evidence enough that many primitive races believe that the conscious thinking soul leaves the body during sleep. But there is not a second conscious thinking soul left

behind. There is no evidence that any human being, on awakening from a dream, ever remembered that he existed simultaneously in two distinct series of conscious thoughts and actions. His thinking self was only one. It seemed to leave his body and go elsewhere. He saw that the body had a principle of life left with it, but not a second principle of thought. This theory, then, of a double soul is a mere misuse of words, and rests on no scientific basis of observation or experience.

There have been instances of persons who, by some strange cerebral conditions, have passed from one state of consciousness into another, and in the second state have forgotten all they knew in the previous condition. They have then passed back, during an interval of sleep, into their original state, instantly remembering all they learned before while in that condition, but forgetting all they knew in the second. But even this extremely rare phenomenon does not justify the assumption of a double soul. The patient in this case had no double consciousness, but simply forgot in one condition what was remembered in another. This was not having two souls, but it was one soul passing into two different states of thought and life.

It is often asserted that the primitive races regard their shadows as their soul, and hence it is argued that the very notion of the soul may have been derived from the sight of the shadow. This

is reversing the order of thought. The idea of the soul must have existed before it could have been compared to a shadow. When the Romans called a disembodied spirit an "umbra," or shadow, and the Greeks used the same word, they simply meant that it was unsubstantial, like a shadow.

As a shadow is visible, but not tangible, as it retains the outline of the form, so the ghost was believed to be visible but not tangible, and to have a vague outline of the human form. But how could any human being believe that the shadow which always accompanies the body, and is never seen without it, can be the spirit which has no body, and which leaves the body in dreams? The most striking case on record of such an imagination is in the story of Peter Schlemil, the man who sold his shadow. We ourselves often use the word shadow to express something unsubstantial, as when we say, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!" No one would infer from this that we considered our souls to be the shadows. We can usually best get at the conceptions of the undeveloped races by recalling our own notions when we were children. We shall remember, I think, that our shadow had a mysterious quality to our infantile mind. It aroused our fancy; we may have tried to run away from it; we have stamped upon it; it was an attendant from which we could not get away.

But it never

occurred to us for a moment that it was our soul, or self. Similar childish fancies take possession of the childlike races. The natives of Benin call a man's shadow his guide, and believe it will witness if he has done well or ill. The Basutos are careful not to let their shadow fall on the river, lest a crocodile should seize it, and draw them in.

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§ 3. Does Buddhism deny the existence of the soul? One remarkable and unaccountable exception, if it is an exception, to the universal belief of mankind in the soul, as a simple substantial principle of feeling, thought, and will, known by consciousness, is the great religion of Buddha. are positively assured by the best informed writers on this religion, that it persistently denies and rejects the notion of a soul in man. This is stated in the most decided form by.Rhys Davids, one of the most recent and learned writers. Buddhism, he says, teaches that man is a flux of emotions, thought, acts, with no abiding principle behind them. He quotes a passage from the "Sutta Pitaka," to the effect that the unlearned and sensual man regards the soul as residing in sensation and matter, and so gets the idea "I am." But the wise man who has escaped both from ignorance and from acquired knowledge does not have this idea, "I am."

Here, however, comes in the necessity of under

It is

standing the meaning of words, of entering into the state of mind of the Buddhist thinker. of small consequence to have any statement, unless we comprehend the intention of the man who makes it.

Now the whole purpose of original Buddhism was to teach men how to escape the miseries of life by the destruction of desire. Among these desires is the wish for continued existence. This also must be destroyed. Therefore the Pitakas, or oldest religious books, perpetually repeat such statements as this:

"I see in the world this trembling race given to desire for existences; they lament in the mouth of death, not being free from the desire for reiterated existences. Look on those men trembling with selfishness; let them be unselfish, not having any attachment to existences."

The object being to produce perfect peace by the destruction of all desire-even the desire for continued existence the remedy must be found in knowledge, which is the Buddhist way of salvation. Brahmanism in the time of Buddha sought the same end. The Laws of Manu say of the sage: "Let him not seek for death, let him not seek for life." But their method of extinguishing all desire was by ascetic mortifications. Buddha had tried these, and found them insufficient. His great discovery was that salvation came through knowledge, knowledge of the laws of being. He reached