This
external soul, or bush soul, as Miss Kingsley calls it, may be
almost any animal, for example, a leopard, a fish, or a tortoise;
but it is never a domestic animal and never a plant. Unless he is
gifted with second sight, a man cannot see his own bush soul, but a
diviner will often tell him what sort of creature his bush soul is,
and after that the man will be careful not to kill any animal of
that species, and will strongly object to any one else doing so. A
man and his sons have usually the same sort of animals for their
bush souls, and so with a mother and her daughters. But sometimes
all the children of a family take after the bush soul of their
father; for example, if his external soul is a leopard, all his sons
and daughters will have leopards for their external souls. And on
the other hand, sometimes they all take after their mother; for
instance, if her external soul is a tortoise, all the external souls
of her sons and daughters will be tortoises too. So intimately bound
up is the life of the man with that of the animal which he regards
as his external or bush soul, that the death or injury of the animal
necessarily entails the death or injury of the man.
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