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The Romans give three: "Bis duo sunt homines, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra." The same belief is found among nearly all savages. The Fijians distinguish between the spirit which is buried with the dead man and that more ethereal spirit which is reflected in the water and lingers near the place where he died.
Whether the earliest thinkers identified heart, breath, shadow, with life, or whether they consciously used words of material origin to denote an immaterial conception, of course we do not know. The Roman umbra hovers about the grave, the manes go to Orcus, the spiritus seeks the stars.
There is not, however, one specimen in his book which I would exchange for mine, the work and the gift of one of the most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is coiled around him, with the motto, Gravis cantantibus umbra.
He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the umbra of White at Bateman's breakfast-party.
The remains of this great man were interred in St Peter's Churchyard at Ratisbon, and the following inscription, embodying an epitaph which he had written for himself, was engraven on his tombstone. Mensus eram coelos, nunc terræ metior umbras: Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra jacet. This monument was not long preserved.
And the Romani nominis umbra, the glamour of the Roman name, fell on the old man, too feeble now to fight; and as he looked, says Jornandes, on the site of the city, and on the fleets of ships, and the world-famous walls, and the people from all the nations upon earth, he said, 'Now I behold what I have often heard tell, and never believed.
'Brethren, be sober and watch; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist ye, strong in faith. In manus tuas... is said twice. Redemisti nos. ... Commendo spiritum meum; Custodi nos ... sub umbra.... Salva nos; Nunc dimittis.... Gloria Patri, Salva nos Domine vigilantes, custodi nos... pace.
Always it rose brighter than one had dared to think, always larger and with some wonderful change in its outline, and now with a strange, less luminous, greener disk upon it that grew with its growth, the umbra of the earth.
Are those little circlets of light enclosing a round umbra or slightly darker spot, that move along the bottom as the bubbles drift above on the surface, shadows or reflections? In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems no current, a dust gathers on the water, falling from the trees, or borne thither by the wind and dropping where its impulse ceases.
Logi, or fire, licks up food and trencher and all. This chimney is more voracious than the sea. Give time enough, and all which yonder depths contain might pass through this insatiable throat, leaving only a few ashes and the memory of a flickering shade, pulvis et umbra. We recognize this when we have anything to conceal.
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