The earliest view held by primitive man about the activities of willing, feeling, or thinking, regards them simply as the manifestations of something which lives and wills inside the visible man. This something is regarded as embodied in one or other of the organs of the human body or as concealed {30} therein. Accordingly the Homeric poems give the name of the "midriff" (~phrê/n, phre/nes~) to most of the phenomena of will or feeling and even to those of the intellect. The "heart" (~ê=tor, kê=r~) is also the name of a variety of feelings that were regarded as located in the heart and even identified with it. But this mode of expression had already for Homer become mere formula; such expressions are not always to be taken literally; the words of the poet often show that as a matter of fact he thought of these functions and emotions as incorporeal, though they were still named after parts of the body.[57\1] And so we often find mentioned side by side with the "midriff" and in the closest conjunction with it, the ~thumo/s~, a name which is not taken from any bodily organ and shows already that it is thought of as an immaterial function. In the same way many other words of this kind (~no/os-noei=n-no/êma, boulê/, me/nos, mê=tis~) are used to describe faculties and activities of the will, sense, or thought, and show that these activities are thought of as independent, free-working, and incorporeal. A single thread still attaches the poet to the modes of conception and expression of the older world, but he himself has penetrated adventurously far into the realm of pure spirit. With a less cultured people the identification of the special functions of the will and the intellect only leads to the materialization of these into the notion of special physical entities, and consequently to the association of still other "souls", in the shape of "Conscience", it may be, or "Will", in addition to that other shadowy "double" of mankind, the "second self".[58\1] The tendency of the Homeric singers was already setting in just the opposite direction--the mythology of the "inner man" was breaking down altogether. They had only to take a few steps further in the same direction to find that they could dispense with the _psyche_ as well. The belief in the existence of the psyche was the oldest and most primitive hypothesis adopted by mankind to explain the phenomena of dreams, swoons, and ecstatic visions; these mysterious states were accounted for by the intervention of a special material personality. Now, Homer has little interest in premonitions and ecstatic states, and no inclination in that direction whatever. He cannot, therefore, have been very much concerned with the evidence for the existence of a psyche in living men. The final proof of the idea that the psyche must have been dwelling in man is the fact that it is separated from him in death. A man dies when he breathes out his last breath. This breath,