Note 808 — Chapter VIII · THE IDEA OF THE SOUL
Joseph Ward Swain translation
The difference between the two versions becomes still smaller and is reduced to almost nothing, if we observe that, when Spencer and Gillen tell us that the ancestral soul is incarnated in the woman, the expressions they use are not to be taken literally. It is not the whole soul which comes to fertilize the mother, but only an emanation from this soul. In fact, according to their own statement, a soul equal or even superior in power to the one that is incarnated continues to live in the nanja tree or rock (see Nat. Tr., p. 514); we shall have occasion to come back to this point again (cf. below, p. 275).