As I have remarked, in another place, the worth of an hypothesis may be judged from its genealogy; and so judged the hypothesis of an independent vital principal does not commend itself. Its history carries us back to the ghost-theory of the savage. Suggested by experiences of dreams, there arises belief in a double--a second self which wanders away during sleep and has adventures but comes back on waking; which deserts the body during abnormal insensibility of one or other kind; and which is absent for a long period at death, though even then is expected eventually to return. This indwelling other-self, which can leave the body at will, is by-and-by regarded as able to enter the bodies of fellow men or of animals; or again, by implication, as liable to have its place usurped by the intruding doubles of fellow men, living or dead, which cause fits or other ills. Along with these developments its quality changes. At first thought of as quite material it is gradually de-materialized, and in advanced times comes to be regarded as spirit or breath; as we see in ancient religious books, where "giving up the ghost" is shown by the emergence of a small floating figure from the mouth of a dying man. This indwelling second self, more and more conceived as the real self which uses the body for its purposes, is, with the advance of intelligence, still further divested of its definite characters; and, coming in mediæval days to be spoken of as "animal spirits," ends in later days in being called a vital principle. Entirely without assignable attributes, this something occurs in thought not as an idea but as a pseud-idea (_First Principles_, Chap. II). It is assumed to be representable while really unrepresentable. We need only insist on answers to certain questions to see that it is simply a name for an alleged existence which has not been conceived and cannot be conceived.