This chapter presents a survey of the various theories on early or “primitive” soul-beliefs propounded by anthropologists and scholars of religion from the 19th century to the present day. Aside from such half-forgotten scholars as Adolf Bastian and Herbert Spencer, the origin of many later theories can be traced to the animistic school of Edward Tylor (1832-1917), whose outlines of a “primitive” soul-concept, derived partly from dream-visions, partly from the notion of a life force (often identified with the breath), exerted great influence on anthropologists such as James Frazer. Also of great influence were the “dualistic” typologies of soul-beliefs associated with early 20th-century scholars like A. C. Kruijt and Wilhelm Wundt and especially with the Swedish Sanskritist and historian of religions Ernst Arbman (1891-1959), whose idea of a dual “primitive” soul-concept, constituted by an anthropomorphic “free-soul” derived from dream visions, and one or more impersonal and shapeless “vital souls” identified with breath, pulse etc., has had a lasting influence on the study of soul-conceptions up till the present day. While cultural evolutionism largely fell out of favor after the mid-20th century, it will be noted that theories on the “origins” of religious phenomena have made a recent comeback with the so-called cognitive study of religion, which takes a largely evolutionary-psychological approach to explaining beliefs in gods, spirits, souls, etc.