its fate, leaving behind it (åvdpórηs) its (or the) human nature and youth." 1 This is the nearest approach to a myth which we get while we are dealing with the living world, i.e., so long as we are dealing with the yuxý in its actual manifestations. When we descend to Hadês or from any side enter the other world, the mere meaning of vxn is complicated with what mythology may have to tell us concerning the nature and the life of incorporeal spirits; and though the actual meaning of the word, and the mythic nature of the thing, run so much into each other that they cannot always be kept apart, we must yet guard ourselves, as much as we can, against confounding them. If the breath be now conceived as having a quite separate existence, and if any speculations arise as to the nature of this state, it is clear that the very slight phenomenal existence which belongs to the vyń, by right of its name, must be eked out from some other phenomenon. What then are the phenomena which next to the breath have suggested to mankind the idea of a second individuality beside that which is bound up with his body? Three have been specially influential in this manner, namely, the shadow, the reflexion (in water), and the image seen in dreams. These form an ascending scale, so far as regards their apparent phenomenal existence: the shadow is the shape and nothing more; the reflexion has the shape, the colour, and the garments of life; the dream-figure, in addition to the possession of this bodily resemblance, can hear and speak. The forms in which these ideas are presented to us in the Greek, whenever they come to image the departed soul, are σκιά and εἴδωλον: ὄνειρος occurs sometimes as seeming to represent a ghost, but of its use actually to signify a departed spirit we cannot be sure.2 Among the three ideas, shadow, reflexion, dream-image (which, it has been said, are in an ascending scale of apparent reality and apparent separate individuality), it would be natural to expect that the division between the first and second would be broader than that between the second and third. For though the reflexion cannot speak audibly, still it can apparently listen, and it can open its mouth. It might well have been thought that the disabilities in the way of a communication between man and his reflexion were not inherent in the latter; so that the idea would be, that the 1"Hẞn, agreeably with what was noted concerning fear, plague, &c., is imagined as a distinct being, not as a state. 2 "Ovepos certainly cannot be reckoned among the Homeric synonyms for 'soul'. reflexion came and spoke to men in sleep, but could not speak while the original of the reflexion was alive and awake. It cannot, however, be asserted that the eldwλov is ever meant by Homer to include the reflexion; I find that the word σká is undoubtedly used to signify reflexion;1 though not, so far as can certainly be proved, by Homer. We must be content, I think, to leave in some doubt the apportionment of the three ideas between the two words. But we must credit eidwλov with generally signifying the image in the fullest degree in which it could be realised, that is to say the image seen in dreams. When σká is introduced, it expresses the extreme unsubstantiality of the dead. Two passages may be quoted which illustrate the use of okiá in connexion with the other words which are discussed in this paper. In the first, Kirkê directs Odysseus how he must go to the house of Hadês, and how when there he must consult the vxn of Theban Teiresias (Od. x. 492, &c.), "a blind seer, but one whose understanding (opéves, pl.) is firm (still attached to his vxn) to whom, even though dead, Persephone has left his mind (intelligence, voûs) that he might be wise; but the rest flit about, shadows ψυχῇ χρησομένους Θηβαίου Τειρεσίας μάντηος ἀλαοῦ, τοῦ τε φρένες ἔμπεδοί εἰσι· The second passage occurs when Odysseus has been conversing with the yuxý of his mother Antikleia (Od. xi. 204, &c.), and at the end of their converse, the narration goes on: "She spake, and now I, pondering with my understanding (pv), desired to lay hold on the uxý of my dead mother. Thrice I essayed, and my whole soul (Ovuós) urged me to embrace her. But thrice from my hand like a shadow or even a dream (σkin elkeλov ǹ kaì ỏveípw) it flew away. And sharper grief arose in my heart; and to compel her I spoke with winged words: 'Oh, mother, why stay you not for me to lay hold on you; that even in Hadês we two, folded in each other's arms, might have (some) happiness (even) in our grief? Has great Persephone then sent me only a semblance (eldwλov) that I should weep the more?' So I said; and my honoured mother straight answered: Alas! my son, wretched more than all other men. Persephonê has in no way deluded thee. But this is the state of mortals after death. Their nerves no longer hold the flesh and bones' (or, 'they no longer 1 Pausanias, ix. 31, § 6, speaks of the σká of Narkissus. have nerves holding the flesh and bones'), 'for these the strong force of fire has consumed, what time their Oupós first left the white bones. But their vxý flying, flits about (flits aimlessly about) like a dream (oveɩpos)"." We lose the full force of this imagery if we allow our thoughts to dwell upon the feebler reflexion of it in later writers. Later poets may use words like these in an unreal sense; but with Homer the picture is a perfectly definite one. When Pindar calls man a σkias ovap, dream of a shadow, when Eschylus speaks. of the eidwλov σkias, each is speaking the language of poetical half-belief. When σxiά appears in Homer, it is with a full sense of its thinness and unsubstantiality; but it is still thought of as a positive entity. The edwλov or dream-image renders most accurately the mythic notion of the soul, that is to say, the soul as it is imagined to be actually appreciable by the senses, when, on rare occasions, it appears on earth (e.g., Il. xxiii.) or on the occasions, rarer still, in which a living man has descended to the realm of the dead (Od. xi.). Thus, as has been said, in this mythic state ψυχή εἴδωλον. the fux becomes identified with the edwλov. To Achilles when asleep comes the yuxý of Patroclos, "like him in all things, in size, in its beautiful eyes, and its voice, and with like garments on" (Il. xxiii. 65). Sometimes in accounts of ghosts, such as these, vxy and eldwλov seem convertible terms, as in Od. xi. 51 and 83, when the soul of Elpênor is first called his vyn and afterwards his edwλov, and in Il. xxiii. 72, where we are told that the ψυχαί, εἴδωλα καμόντων, “ the breaths, the images of the dead," keep Patroclos from entering Hadês' realm; but in a neighbouring passage to this last, we see that they are not identified. Achilles exclaims Ω πόποι, ἢ ῥά τις ἔστι καὶ εἶν ̓Αίδαο δόμοισιν Alas, there is in the house of Hadês a breath and image," &c. Shortly before we have been told that the vxn of Patroclos went into the ground like smoke (nüтe Kaπvós), an image well suited to the breath (especially if we extend this idea by taking in the smoke which is as it were the breath of the funeral pyre)1 but not to the εἴδωλον. We never hear of the εἴδωλον leaving the body as the ψυχή does. There is not, it would seem, a link during life-time between the man and his edwλov as there is between the living 1 See what is said below of the etymological meaning of Ovuós. I have treated the mythical side of this belief more fully in an article in the Contemporary Review, October, 1879. man and his Ovuós or his vxn. A question, indeed, arises as to θυμός ψυχή. whether the eldwλov exists while the man is still alive. It ought to do so because the image of a living man may be as well seen in dreams as the image of a dead man. We might suppose that, as echoes of man's speech far in secret clefts are made," the body was supposed to have a shadow living in some special home appropriate to these unsubstantial creations. But this theory does not quite square with the fact that when the gods wish to make use of images of living men, as Apollo of Æneas,1 Athênê of Iphthima,2 they make them, and do not call them from their home. In spite of these two instances, however, it is hard to believe that, in ordinary cases, when a man dies, where nothing is said of divine interposition, his eldwXov comes into existence, not having existed before. This question, however, hardly lies within the limit of the present inquiry, which is, not to trace out the myth of the soul and of the other world, but merely to trace, as far as possible, the distinctive ideas which the Homeric Greek attached to each of the four words we have been discussing. We may now rapidly survey the chief points which have been established. Of the four words, Ovpós alone is divorced (for the Greek) from any experiential significance. The curiously close connexion between the Greek Ovpós and the Sanskrit dhuma, smoke, the Latin fumus-its connexion, too, with the Greek Oów, to burn, offer, Oveλλa, storm, Goth. daunis, storm-might lead us to doubt whether Ovpós itself had not once a physical significance not dissimilar from that of yuxý. But for the Greek the physical side has been altogether lost. And as it has thus disappeared, the Ovpós does not lend itself to any myth arising from the belief in the persistency of the soul in a future state. Though this ego is a distinct entity, it is so much bound up with the body that it can scarcely be imagined separate from it. I can only recall one passage in which the Oupós is said to descend to the house of Hadês. It occurs in Il. vii. 131, and is for its singularity worthy of notice. Peleus, says Nestor, if he heard of the defeats of the Greeks, would pray that his Ovuós might go down to Hadês' home (θυμὸν ἀπὸ μελέων δῦναι δόμον Αΐδος εἴσω). The ψυχή is more physical than the Ovuós, and, while we are still upon the upper earth, serves well to express the soul as a vital principle. When, however, we pass to another world, the x alone would be too unsubstantial to allow the growth round it of any mythology, and so we pass on to the doubles, the shadow (with which latter is perhaps identified the reflexion) and the dreamimage; and to these ideas attaches the Homeric mythology of the 2 Od. iv. 795, sq. 1 Il. v. 449, sq. other world, as we may read it in Il. xxiii. and Od. xi. and elsewhere. I may say in conclusion that the above essay is entirely without controversial object, and, as I conceive, is without controversial value. Seeing that this kind of inquiry is of a purely scientific character and aims to establish for itself strict laws of research, all chance of a useful employment of its methods would at once disappear, if words came to be arbitrarily severed from their usual significance to favour any previous theory. In calling Oupós and the rest equivalents for soul, I do not wish to premise anything concerning the entity which the word soul is supposed to connote; nor to use that word in any other senses than those which I believe usually attach to it. And concerning the belief in the existence of the soul separate from the body, that belief, it is obvious, rests upon certain ontological premisses, which are in no way affected by what inquiry may show are the experiential notions which have been associated with the ontological conception. The immortality of the soul is the persistency of the ego; our view regarding the doctrine depends really upon our theory of the ego, that is, upon the relative weight we attach to the premisses and arguments of ontological and of experiential philosophy. C. F. KEARY. III.—G. H. LEWES'S POSTHUMOUS VOLUMES. Ar the close of a life largely devoted to research and speculation the late George Henry Lewes began to publish his most general and important conclusions in a series of volumes entitled Problems of Life and Mind. The first two of these laid the "Foundations of a Creed," by expounding the method of science, the limitations of knowledge, the conditions of inference, and the categories of matter, force, and cause. In the third volume the "Physical Basis of Mind" was discussed and illustrated; and that unhappily was as far as this remarkable series of disquisitions proceeded during the life of the author. Amongst his papers, however, remained some materials for subsequent volumes and accordingly a small one on The Study of Psychology appeared early in 1879, and later in the same year another, larger, but unfinished and fragmentary, dealing with certain more special psychological questions. These last two volumes form the subject of the present article: they would have been reviewed in MIND much earlier but for unavoidable delays. |