Note 58 — PART I CHAPTER I ΒELIEFS ABOUT THE SOUL AND CULT OF SOULS IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

The belief in the existence of more than one soul in the same person is very wide-spread. See J. G. Müller, Americ. Urrelig., p. 66, 207 f., Tylor, i, 432 f. The distinction between the five spiritual powers dwelling within man given by the Avesta rests upon similar grounds (Geiger, Civ. of East. Iran, 1, 124 ff.). Even in Homer Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i, 249, finds a “two-soul” theory fully developed. According to him Homer recognizes in the θυμός—a word supposed to be derived from the steam rising from freshly shed and still warm blood—a second soul in addition to the ψυχή: a “smoke-soul” side by side with the “breath-soul”. But if by soul a “something” is meant—as it must be in popular psychology—which is added independently to the body and its faculties, something which lives separately in the body and after the death of the body (with which it is not indissolubly united) dissociates itself and goes off independently—then the θυμός of Homer cannot be called a “soul” or a double of the ψυχή. Again and again the θυμός is clearly referred to as a mental faculty of the living body; either thinking or willing or merely feeling (θυμῷ νοέω, θυμῷ δεῖσαι, γηθήσει θυμῷ, ἐχολώσατο θυμῷ, ἤραρε θυμὸν ἐδωδῇ, etc.) is conducted by its means. It is the seat of the emotions (μένος ἔλλαβε θυμόν) and belongs to the body of the living man, and is especially enclosed in the φρένες. In the face of this it is impossible to regard it as something independent of the body or as anything else than a special faculty of the same living body. Once, indeed, Η 131, the θυμός is spoken of, instead of ψυχή as that which goes down to Haides, but this can only be an error or an oversight (see also below, ch. xi, n. 2). According to Homeric ideas—and this is a conception repeated over and over again in Greek literature and even in Greek philosophy—the body has all its vital powers in itself, not merely θυμός but μένος, νόος, μῆτις, βουλή. Yet it only acquires life when supplemented by the ψυχή, which is something different from all these bodily powers—something with an independent being of its own and alone deserving the name “soul”, a name which belongs as little to θυμός as to νόος. Gomperz thinks that θυμός, etc., were at first the only recognized faculties of the body and that ψυχή was only (for the Greeks) added later. This is certainly not to be made out from Homer—or any other part of Greek literature.