The Rabbis taught a threefold
division--_nephesh_, the animal, _ruah_, the human, and _neshamah_, the
divine soul, which corresponds to that of Plato into _thumos_,
_epithumia_, and _nous_. And even Saint Paul seems to have recognized
such inherent plurality when he distinguishes between the bodily soul,
the intellectual soul, and the spiritual gift, in his Epistle to the
Romans. No such refinements of course as these are to be expected among
the red men; but it may be looked upon either as the rudiments of these
teachings, or as a gradual debasement of them to gross and material
expression, that an old and wide-spread notion was found among both
Iroquois and Algonkins, that man has two souls, one of a vegetative
character, which gives bodily life, and remains with the corpse after
death, until it is called to enter another body; another of more
ethereal texture, which in life can depart from the body in sleep or
trance, and wander over the world, and at death goes directly to the
land of Spirits.
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