2. Be it so then: they differ about the soul, but have - 194 - pronounced other things about it in unison: and of others, one man calls pleasure its good, another its evil, and again a third man, its middle state between good and evil. But its nature some call immortal, some mortal, and others say that it remains for a time, but others that it becomes brutalised, others divide it into atoms, others embody it three times, others assign to it periods of three thousand years. For though they do not live even an hundred years, they talk of three thousand years ³ about to come. What then must we term these things? They seem to me, to be a prodigy, or folly, or madness, or rebellion, or all these together. If they have found out anything true, let them agree together about it, or let them join together, and I then will gladly listen to them. But, if they distract the soul, and draw it, one into a different nature, another into a different being, changing one kind of matter for another; I confess I am harassed by the ebbing and flowing of the subject. At one time I am immortal and rejoice; at another time again I become mortal and weep. Anew I am dissolved into atoms: I become water, and I become air: I become fire, and then after a little, neither air, nor fire: he makes me a beast, he makes me a fish ⁴. Again then I have dolphins for my brothers; but when I look on myself, I am frightened at my body, and I know not how I shall call it, man, or dog, or wolf, or bull, or bird, or snake, or serpent, or chimaera; for I am changed by the philosophers into all the beasts, of the land, of the sea, having wings, of many forms, wild or tame, dumb or vocal, brute or reasoning: I swim, I fly, I rise aloft, I crawl, I run, I sit. But here is Empedocles, and he makes me a stump of a tree.