It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a
quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its
unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage,
unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the
assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for
example, the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head,
another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an
artery is felt pulsating. Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the
phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead first,
by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body,
not simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only
complete when all four have departed. Some of the Dyaks of Borneo
and the Malays of the Peninsula believe that every man has seven
souls. The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes are of opinion that he has
three. The natives of Laos suppose that the body is the seat of
thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the
eyes, and so on.
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