So we find as far back as we can test the belief of men, certain theories touching the fate of the soul after death, which represent, in the germ at least, the prevalent opinions of our own day; and out of some of which these opinions have sprung. First among these, probably in point of time, stands the purely sceptical theory which takes its rise from the earliest efforts of language to give expression to the unseen. Casting about for a name for the essential part of man, the life or soul of him, language finds at first that it has no suitable word, and then supplies its want by using the breath--the ψυχη, _spiritus_--in this sense. Like the vital spark itself, the breath is seen to depart when the man dies. Whither has it gone? The purely negative, the purely sceptical answer would be, "It has disappeared." The answer actually given in most religious creeds is, "It has gone to the unseen _place_," or the concealed _place_; as the Greeks said, to Hades (Ἀ-ίδης); or, as our Northern ancestors said, to Hel.[7] Thus, out of pure negation we have the beginning of a myth: the _spirit_ becomes something definite, and the place it has gone to is partly realized. The unseen place is underground, gained by a dark valley which stretches there from the upper earth. Enough of the old belief remains to keep this home of the dead itself dark and shadowy and lifeless. "The senseless dead, the simulacra of mortals," as Homer says. And we remember how even a hero like Achilles "would rather be on earth and serve for hire to a man of mean estate, than rule a king among the dead." The same thought is expressed by the Hebrew poet,[8] "Sheol shall not praise thee, Jehovah, The dead shall not celebrate thee; They that go down unto the pit shall not hope for thy truth; The living, the living, shall praise thee, as I do this day." No people have held up this _destructive_ side of death, this negative theory of a future, with sharper outline than the Greeks and Hebrews. What a contrast to the teaching of modern religions is that line, "They that go down unto the pit shall not hope for thy truth!" Other people have found themselves unable to rest at this point; they have endowed their place with a personality, but, still strongly impressed with its horrors, this personality is grim and fearful. Even with the Greeks, Hades is a person, not a place; with the Teutons, Hel has gone through the same transformation: and a thousand other images of horror to be met with in different creeds, devouring dragons, dogs who, like Cerberus, threaten those who are journeying to the underground kingdom, can be shown by their names to have sprung from merely negative images of death, the unseen, the coverer, the concealer, the cave of night.