Nephesh is but partially a synonym for the word whose significations we have just considered. The different senses it bears are strangely interchanged and confounded in King James's version. Its first meaning is breath, the breathing of a living being. Next it means the vital spirit, the indwelling life of the body. "If any mischief follow, thou shalt take life for life." The most adequate rendering of it would be, in a great majority of instances, by the term life. "In jeopardy of his life [not soul] hath Adonijah spoken this." It sometimes represents the intelligent soul or mind, the subject of knowledge and desire. "My soul knoweth right well.". Also the heart, is often used more frequently perhaps than any other term as meaning the vital principle, and the seat of consciousness, intellect, will, and affection. Jehovah said to Solomon, in answer to his prayer, "Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart." The later Jews speculated much, with many cabalistic refinements, on these different words. They said many persons were supplied with a Nephesh without a Ruah, much more without a Neshamah. They declared that the Nephesh (Psyche) was the soul of the body, the Ruah (Pneuma) the soul of the Nephesh, and the Neshamah (Nous) the soul of the Ruah. Some of the Rabbins assert that the destination of the Nephesh, when the body dies, is Sheol; of the Ruah, the air; and of the Neshamah, heaven. 6 The Hebrews used all those words in speaking of brutes, to denote their sensitive existence, that they did in reference to men. They held that life was in every instance an emission, or breath, from the Spirit of God. But they do not intimate of brutes, as they do of men, that they have surviving shades. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, however, bluntly declares that "all have one breath, and all go to one place, so that a man hath no pre eminence above a beast." As far as the words used to express existence, soul, or mind, legitimate any inference, it would seem to be, either that the essential life is poured out at death as so much air, or else that it is received again by God, in both cases implying naturally, though not of philosophic necessity, the close of conscious, individual existence. But the examination we have made of their real opinions shows that, however obviously this conclusion might flow from their pneumatology, it was not the expectation they cherished. They believed there was a dismal empire in the earth where the rephaim, or ghosts of the dead, reposed forever in a state of semi sleep. "It is a land of shadows: yea, the land Itself is but a shadow, and the race That dwell therein are voices, forms of forms. And echoes of themselves."