It is not needful that the life, so
conceived, should be in the man; it may be absent from his body and
still continue to animate him by virtue of a sort of sympathy or
action at a distance. So long as this object which he calls his life
or soul remains unharmed, the man is well; if it is injured, he
suffers; if it is destroyed, he dies. Or, to put it otherwise, when
a man is ill or dies, the fact is explained by saying that the
material object called his life or soul, whether it be in his body
or out of it, has either sustained injury or been destroyed. But
there may be circumstances in which, if the life or soul remains in
the man, it stands a greater chance of sustaining injury than if it
were stowed away in some safe and secret place. Accordingly, in such
circumstances, primitive man takes his soul out of his body and
deposits it for security in some snug spot, intending to replace it
in his body when the danger is past. Or if he should discover some
place of absolute security, he may be content to leave his soul
there permanently.
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