In opposition to the orthodox Mohammedan tenets which make Man's
soul his percipient Ego, an entity, a unity, the Soofi considers
it a fancy, opposed to body, which is a fact; at most a state of
things, not a thing; a consensus of faculties whereof our frames
are but the phenomena. This is not contrary to Genesitic legend.
The Hebrew Ruach and Arabic Ruh, now perverted to mean soul or
spirit, simply signify wind or breath, the outward and visible
sign of life. Their later schools are even more explicit. "For
that which befalls man befalls beasts; as the one dies, so does
the other; they have all one death; all go unto one place"
(Eccles. iii. 19). But the modern soul, a nothing, a string of
negations, a negative in chief, is thus described in the
Mahabharat: "It is indivisible, inconceivable, inconceptible: it
is eternal, universal, permanent, immovable: it is invisible and
unalterable." Hence the modern spiritualism which, rejecting
materialism, can use only material language.

These, says the Haji, are mere sounds. He would not assert "Verba
gignunt verba," but "Verba gignunt res," a step further. The idea
is Bacon's "idola fori, omnium molestissima," the twofold
illusions of language; either the names of things that have no
existence in fact, or the names of things whose idea is confused
and ill-defined.

He derives the Soul-idea from the "savage ghost" which Dr.
Johnson defined to be a "kind of shadowy being." He justly
remarks that it arose (perhaps) in Egypt; and was not invented by
the "People of the Book." By this term Moslems denote Jews and
Christians who have a recognized revelation, while their