THE connexion between spirit and life is one of those problems
the treatment of which involves such very complicated
factors, that we have to be on our guard lest we ourselves
get caught in the word-nets in which we seek to snare the
great riddle. For how can we include within the operations
of a thought process those almost limitless complexes of
facts we call 'spirit' or 'life', unless we represent them
dramatically through verbal concepts (Wortbegriffe)--them-
selves mere counters of the intellect? The mistrust of verbal
concepts invites real difficulties, and yet it is particularly
appropriate when we undertake to speak of fundamental
things. 'Spirit' and 'life' are familiar words with us,
very old acquaintances in fact, pawns that for thousands of
years have been pushed back and forth on the thinker's
chessboard. The problem began in the grey dawn of time,
when someone made the bewildering discovery that the
living breath, which left the body of the dying man in the
last death-rattle, meant more than mere air set in motion.
It is scarcely accidental therefore that such onomatopœic
words as ruach, ruch, roho (Hebraic, Arabic, Swahili) mean
spirit not less clearly than the Greek pneuma, and the Latin
spiritus.

Do we then know, in spite of every possible familiarity with
the verbal concept, what spirit really is? Are we sure that
when we use this word we all understand one and the same
thing? Is not the word 'spirit' a most perplexingly
ambiguous term? The same verbal sign, spirit, is used for
an inexpressible transcendent idea of most comprehensive
meaning; in a commonplace sense it corresponds to the
concept 'mind'; it may connote intellectual wit, or it may
mean a ghost; it can also represent an unconscious complex

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