According to the great philologist Max Müller, Soul is the Gothic saivala, and this is clearly related to another Gothic word, saivs, which means the sea. The sea was called saivs from a root si or siv, the Greek seio, to shake; it meant the tossed-about water, in contradistinction to stagnant or running water. The soul being called saivala, we see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic nations as a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath, and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep.
