An article in The Guardian in November last year described Highgate cemetery as ‘the last resting place of 166,400 souls’ (italics mine, needless to say).

Recently an elderly friend of mine remarked that the trouble about getting old is that the body wears out while the mind stays bright as a child’s. If pressed (somewhat pedantically) she would readily have agreed that the trouble is really that parts of the body wear out while the brain part of the body does not.

Sometimes we use soul for the whole of a person (‘there is not a soul left behind’). Sometimes we use body for the whole (as in ‘anybody’ or ‘somebody’). Other times we use these words as opposite parts (‘keeping body and soul together’).

The ambiguity of our language betrays our uncertainty about who or what we really are. We have many implicit models as to what body is, and it is a mistake to try to tidy up the ambiguity or opt for a single model.

There are two main ideas, or models. One is that my body is a thing I have. The other is of body as a mode of being which I am.