what is the soul and where is its seat?

Again we shall go to the ancients, as reported by Montaigne, for ideas.

He tells us first what the soul was said to be

We start by denialists; Crates and Dicearchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all.

Plato that it was a substance moving of itself

Thales a nature without repose

Aedepiades an exercising of the senses

Hesiod and Anaximander a thing composed of earth and water

Parmenides of earth and fire

Empedocles of blood

Posidonius, Cleanthes and Galen that it was heat or a hot complexion

Hippocrates a spirit diffused all over the body

Varro that it was an air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart and diffused throughout the whole body

Zeno the quintessence of the four elements

Heraclides Ponticus that it was the light

Zenocrates and the Egyptians a mobile number

The Chaldeans a virtue without any determinate form

Aristotle that which causes the body to move

and now where it’s seat is

Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain

Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body

Epicurus in the stomach

The Stoics about and within the heart

Erasistratus adjoining the membrane of the epicranium

Empedocles in the blood

Galen thought every part of the body had its soul

Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows

Chrysippus about the heart

And yours truly asks, who among these ancients is telling us the true idea of the soul and its seat? How do you know?