6. Put away from you the idea that the soul is like an exhalation, and then think of your own state, or of the state of your friends, or of the state of your infants after death. Will you not think that you will live a man, and they likewise? And since there is no life which is life without the senses, you cannot think otherwise than that they also see, hear, and speak; thus also panegyrists write over the deceased, placing them in heaven among the angels, in white garments, and in paradises. But if afterwards you relapse into the idea, that the soul is an exhalation, and has no sensitive life until after the Last Judgment, can you help being distracted when you think, What and where shall I be in the meantime? Shall I float in the air, or remain in Pu?* Yet the preacher teaches me that after death I shall come among the happy, if I have believed well and lived well. You may believe then, as the truth is, that you are a man after death as well as before it, with only the difference that there is between the natural and the spiritual. Thus also all those think who believe in eternal life, and know nothing of this hypothetical tradition concerning the soul.
* From the Greek pou = where.