The history of the _mitama_ suggests that the material, or partially material, conceptions of the soul are a comparatively recent development. Though religion is on the whole progressive, it by no means follows that all movements of religious thought are in a forward direction. The spiritual edifice which poets and seers build up is being constantly reduced to ruin by the inept handling of the material-minded vulgar, to be reared anew by others more splendid than before. But let us not mistake the ruin for the first courses of a new building, the dead husk for the living germ. Ghosts and ball-souls are aberrant conceptions which belong to the former category. The dullards to whom such notions are due are quite incapable of originating the pregnant, though artificial, conception of body and soul as two distinct entities. Let me add a few more etymological facts which bear on the question of spirituality. _Mi-kage_, or "august shadow," is an ancient synonym for _mi-tama_. It is unnecessary to suppose that anything but a metaphorical meaning was originally intended. There is, however, a modern superstition that when a man is near his death his shadow becomes thinner. The ordinary Japanese word for "to die" is _shinuru_, that is to say, "breath-depart." Death is also called concealment, long concealment, body-concealment, rock-concealment (in allusion to the practice of burial in dolmens), change, and ending. In the case of the Gods, death is called divine departure or divine ascent. _Iki_, "breath," one of the vital functions, is put by metonymy for their sum, that is, life. It has not, like our word "spirit" and the Greek "psyche," taken the further step of coming to mean the human soul, except we identify it with the _ke_ of _hotoke_, which has been plausibly derived from _hito_, "man," and _ke_, "spirit." It is now the common Buddhist term for Buddha and his saints, and also for the spirits of the sainted dead. The material-minded man, as usual, drags it down to his own level. To him the corpse at a funeral is the _hotoke_. It is not certain, however, that the element _ke_ of this word is not of Chinese origin, China, always far in advance of Japan in spirituality, has exercised a profound influence on the development of Japanese ideas regarding spiritual matters. Another material conception of the life or soul is contained in a poem of the _Manyôshiu_, in which a fisherman named Urashima is related to have found his way to the _Toko yo no kuni_, or "Eternal Land." When about to return to earth he received from his wife a casket, with the injunction that he must not open it. He does open it, upon which his life or soul comes out and flies away like a white cloud to the "Eternal Land." He dies soon after. But this is a poetic fancy, open to strong suspicions of Chinese inspiration.