folk belief In folkloristics, folk belief or folk-belief is a broad genre of folklore that is often expressed in narratives, customs, rituals, foodways, proverbs, and rhymes. It also includes a wide variety of behaviors, expressions, and beliefs. Examples of ...

, spirit is the vital principle or animating essence within all

living thing ''Living Thing'' is the fifth album by Peter Bjorn and John, released on 30 March 2009 in the UK and 31 March in the US. Much darker and more experimental than their previous album ''Writer's Block'', ''Living Thing ''expands the sound of the gro ...

s. As recently as 1628 and 1633 respectively, both

William Harvey William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made influential contributions in anatomy and physiology. He was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, the systemic circulation and propert ...

and

René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...

still speculated that somewhere within the body, in a special locality, there was a "vital spirit" or "vital force", which animated the whole bodily frame, just as the engine in a factory moves the machinery in it.

Overview

People have frequently conceived of spirit as a supernatural being, or

non-physical entity In ontology and the philosophy of mind, a non-physical entity is an object that exists outside physical reality. The philosophical schools of idealism and dualism assert that such entities exist, while physicalism asserts that they do not. Posit ...

; for example, a demon, ghost, fairy, or

angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inclu ...

. In ancient Islamic terminology however, the term ''spirit'' (''

rūḥ The Holy Spirit ( ar, رُوحُ ٱلْقُدُسِ, ''ruh al-qudus'') is mentioned four times in the Quran, where it acts as an agent of divine action or communication. The Muslim interpretation of the Holy Spirit is generally consistent with o ...

''), applies only to "pure" spirits, but not to other invisible creatures, such as

jinn Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources) – are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic mytho ...

, demons and

angels In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles incl ...

. Historically, spirit has been used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as put forth in the notable last paragraph of

Sir Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ...

's ''

Principia Mathematica The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...

''. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit. The concepts of spirit and

soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun '' soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest atte ...

often overlap, and some systems propose that both survive bodily death. "Spirit" can have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. "Spirit" is also often used to refer to the

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, m ...

Etymology

The word ''spirit'' came into

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

via

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intellig ...

''esperit''. Its source is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''spīritus'', whose original meaning was "breath, breathing" and hence "spirit, soul, courage, vigor"; its ultimate origin is a

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

root '. In Latin, was distinct from Latin ''anima'', whose etymological meaning was also "breathing" ( PIE root *''h₂enh₁-''), yet which had taken a slightly different meaning, namely "

Classical Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

also had a similar distinction between "soul" and "spirit", in each case involving again an etymological sense "breathing": * ( ψυχή), originally "cold air", hence "breath of life" and "soul"See François 2009, pp. 187–197. ( PIE root ' "to breathe"). * (:wikt:πνεῦμα#Ancient Greek, πνεῦμα) "breath, motile air, spirit", from verb (:wikt:πνέω#Ancient Greek, πνέω) "to breathe". A distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions: Arabic (:wikt:نفس#Etymology 2, نفس) opposite (:wikt:روح#Etymology 1, روح); Hebrew ''Soul#Judaism, neshama'' ( ) or ''nephesh'' ( ) (in Hebrew comes from the root or "breath") opposite ( ). (Note, however, that in Semitic just as in Indo-European, this dichotomy has not ''always'' been as neat historically as it has come to be taken over a long period of development: Both (root ) and (root ), as well as cognate words in various Semitic languages, including Arabic, also preserve meanings involving miscellaneous air phenomena: "breath", "wind", and even "odour".)

Usage

"Spirit" has acquired a number of meanings: * Christian theology can use the term "Spirit" to refer to the Holy Spirit. ** Christian Science uses "Spirit" as one of seven synonyms for God, as in: "Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love" ** Latter Day Saint movement, Latter Day Saint prophet Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844) rejected the concept of spirit as incorporeal or without substance: "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes." Regarding the soul, Joseph Smith wrote "And the Gods formed man from the dust of the ground, and took his spirit (that is, the man’s spirit), and put it into him; and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Thus, the soul is the combination of a spirit with a body (although most members of the Church use "soul" and "spirit" interchangeably). In Latter-Day Saint scripture, spirits are sometimes referred to as "intelligences". However, other LDS scriptures teach that God organized the spirits out of a pre-existing substance called "intelligence" or "the light of truth". While this may seem confusing, compare how a programmer writes an algorithm by organizing lines of logical code. The logic always existed, independent of the programmer, but it is the creator who organizes it into a living spirit / intelligence / soul. * Various forms of animism, such as Japan's Shinto and African traditional religion, focus on invisible beings that represent or connect with plants, animals, or landforms (in Japanese: ''kami''): translators usually employ the English word "spirit" when trying to express the idea of such entities. Compare the concepts of ancestral spirits and of spirit animal (disambiguation), spirit animals. * According to C. G. Jung (in a lecture delivered to the literary Society of Augsburg, 20 October 1926, on the theme of “Nature and Spirit”): * Parapsychology, Psychical research, "In all the publications of the Society for Psychical Research the term 'spirit' stands for ''the personal Stream of consciousness (psychology), stream of consciousness'' whatever else it may ultimately be proved to imply or require" (James H. Hyslop, 1919). * Paranormal spirits: usually a nickname for a ghost or other undead spirit.

Related concepts

Similar concepts in other languages include Greek ''pneuma'', Chinese ''Ling'' and ''hun'' (靈魂) and Sanskrit ''akasha / Ātman (Hinduism), atman'' (see also ''prana''). Some languages use a word for spirit often closely related (if not synonymous) to ''mind''. Examples include the German ''Geist'' (related to the English word ''ghost'') or the French ''l'esprit''. English versions of the Bible most commonly translate the Hebrew word ''ruach'' (רוח; ''wind'') as "the spirit." Alternatively, Hebrew texts commonly use the word ''nephesh''. Kabbalah, Kabbalists regard ''nephesh'' as one of the five parts of the Jewish

, where ''nephesh'' (animal) refers to the physical being and its animal instincts. Similarly, Scandinavian languages, Scandinavian, Baltic languages, Baltic, and Slavic languages, Slavic languages, as well as Chinese language, Chinese (qi, 气 ''qi''), use the words for ''breath'' to express concepts similar to "the spirit".

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Deities and spirits Ghosts Religious philosophical concepts Spirituality Vitalism Supernatural legends