Vestiges and survivals of the primitive forms of the corporeal soul extend far down into later culture. Nevertheless, the second main form of soul-belief, that of the _psyche_, comes to gain the prepondering influence, at first alongside of the corporeal soul, and then more and more displacing it. In this case, the earliest form of the belief, that in a _breath soul_, proves to be also the most permanent. The idea that the soul leaves the dying person in his last breath, and that the breath, therefore, exercises animating or magical effects, or that in it the soul may pass over from one person to another, is a very common belief. Probably, moreover, it arose independently in many different localities. Some primitive tribes have the custom of holding a child over the bed of a dying person in order that the soul may pass over into it; or, a member of the family stoops over the expiring one to receive his soul. Virgil's _Æneid_ contains an impressive account relating that upon Dido's death her sister attempted to catch the soul, which, as she assumed, roams about as an aerial form, while she also carefully removed the blood from the wound in order that the soul might not remain within the body. Thus, the blood soul and the breath soul are here closely connected. In the further destinies of the breath soul, a particularly important incident is its passage into some swiftly moving animal, perhaps a bird hovering in the air, or, again, some creeping animal, such as the lizard or the snake, whose manner of movement arouses uncanny fear. It is these animals, chiefly, that are regarded as metamorphoses of the psyche. Remarkable evidence that the bird and snake in combination were regarded as vehicles of the soul may be found in the pictorial representations of the natives of northwestern America. The escape of the soul from the body is here portrayed as the departure of a snake from the mouth of a human figure seated in a birdlike ship. This picture combines three ideas, which occur elsewhere also, either singly or in combination, in connection with the wandering of the soul. There is, in the first place, the soul-bird; then the soul-ship, readily suggested by association with a flying bird, and recurring in the ship which was thought in ancient times to cross the Styx of the underworld; finally, the soul-snake, representing the soul in the act of leaving the body. This very common idea of the soul as a snake and, by further association, its conception as a fish, may be ascribed not only to the fear aroused by the creeping snake, but also to the circumstances attending the decomposition of the corpse. The worm which creeps out of the decaying body is directly perceived as a snake. Thus, corporeal soul and psyche are again united; in this union they mediate the idea of an embodied soul, which, in a certain sense, of course, is a psyche retransformed into a corporeal soul.