_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.