a question, would you not answer?

_A._ That would look like pride; but I would rather you should not ask
but where necessity requires.

IX. _M._ I will comply with your wishes, and explain as well as I can
what you require; but not with any idea that, like the Pythian Apollo,
what I say must needs be certain and indisputable, but as a mere man,
endeavoring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no
ground to proceed further on than probability. Those men may call their
statements indisputable who assert that what they say can be perceived
by the senses, and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.

_A._ Do as you please: We are ready to hear you.

_M._ The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be
so well understood, really is; for some imagine death to be the
departure of the soul from the body; others think that there is no such
departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is
extinguished with the body. Of those who think that the soul does
depart from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution; others
fancy that it continues to exist for a time; and others believe that it
lasts forever. There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it
is, and whence it is derived: with some, the heart itself (_cor_) seems
to be the soul, hence the expressions, _excordes_, _vecordes_,
_concordes;_ and that prudent Nasica, who was twice consul, was called
Corculus, _i.e._, wise-heart; and AElius Sextus is described as
_Egregie_ cordatus _homo, catus AEliu' Sextus_--that great
_wise-hearted_ man, sage AElius. Empedocles imagines the blood, which is
suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of
the brain seems to be the throne of the soul; others neither allow the
heart itself, nor any portion of the brain, to be the soul, but think
either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul, or else that
the brain is so. Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be the
_anima_, as our schools generally agree; and indeed the name signifies
as much, for we use the expressions _animam agere_, to live; _animam
efflare_, to expire; _animosi_, men of spirit; _bene animati_, men of
right feeling; _exanimi sententia_, according to our real opinion; and
the very word _animus_ is derived from _anima_. Again, the soul seems
to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.

X. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or
fire being the s