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In This QUARTERLY, XXVII, 1958, No. 3, Dr. Moses Naftalin made an interpretation of an assumed parapraxis of Freud by erroneously translating the Hebrew word ruach as 'smoke'. Dr. Naftalin's speculations are based on an error in the English translation. Freud rightly translated into German ruach (spirit—breath) as Hauch (Der Mann Moses, 1939). The English translator obviously mixed up the German word Hauch (breath) with Rauch (smoke), thus depriving the sentence referred to of all meaning. It should be rendered: '… for the spirit borrows its name from the breath of the wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew ruach, breath)'.
Besides the various meanings of ruach (wind, spirit, soul, mood), there is in Hebrew a close relationship between the words spirit (ruach) and fume, odor (reach), which invites further digression into the problem touched off by Dr. Naftalin's remarks (cf. Dr. Greenacre's remarks about the relationship between odor and spirit).