The conception which is most analogous to the preceding is that of distinct and separate souls animating each its body, of spirits capable of quitting each its dwelling-place. It is this that historians of religion mean by animism. What is remarkable in this conception is its dualistic character. It contains the germ of the opposition between soul and body. The dualistic conception arises slowly from a number of naïve analogies. The first are borrowed from the fact of respiration. Does not one fairly hear the departure of the breath animating a living body, in what one calls the last gasp? Other analogies are borrowed from the physical fact of the shadow cast by the sun; one seems to see the spirit marching side by side with the body, and even changing its place when the body is motionless. Shadow has played a large rôle in the paraphysics of primitive peoples; shadows people the other world. In the third place, during sleep it is incontestable, on the premises that primitive man has at his disposal, that the spirit sometimes makes long journeys, for the sleeper often recollects wandering, hunting, or making war in distant countries, at a time when his companions are perfectly aware that his body has lain motionless. Fainting also seems to be a case in which something dwelling in us suddenly leaves and presently comes back again. Lethargy is a more striking example of the same thing. Visions in delirium, hallucinations in madness, or even in dreams, deal with beings who are invisible to others; fantastic beings who appear to savages as real as any others. Also it is well known that fools and innocents were regarded, until modern times, as inspired and sacred. Other nervous maladies—hysteria, “possession,” somnambulism—add their quota of precision to the conception of a spirit animating the body, dwelling in it, quitting it more or less at will, tormenting it, etc. Thus, by degrees, there arises the conception of a subtle mode of being eluding touch, and commonly vision even, capable of a life independent of the body it inhabits, and more powerful than the body. Man comes to believe himself to be living in a society with beings other than those who appeal directly and grossly to his senses; he believes himself to be living in a society of spirits. [Sidenote: Ghosts.]