As may be imagined, a Heaven intended for the eternal abode of the happy and of God, was the same among the Pagans. Gods and goddesses were also represented in the same way, also a Hell or a subterranean place where it was pretended that the wicked souls descended to be tormented. But this word "hell" taken in its proper and natural signification means nothing but a "lower place," which poets have invented to oppose the dwelling of the celestial inhabitants, who are said to be very sublime and exalted. That is what the Latin word Infernus or inferi signifies, and also the Greek word admc"> [49], that is to say, an obscure place like the sepulchre, or any other low and hidden place. All the rest of what has been said is only pure fiction and the invention of poets whose symbolical discourses are taken literally by feeble, timid and melancholy minds, as well as by those who are interested in sustaining this opinion. OF THE SOUL. I. The Soul is something more delicate and more difficult to treat of than either Heaven or Hell. That is why it is proper to satisfy Your Majesty's curiosity, to speak of it a little more at length. Before saying what I desire on this subject, I will recall in a few words what the most celebrated Philosophers have thought of it. II. Some have said that the Soul is a spirit or an immaterial substance; others, a kind of divinity; some, a very subtile air, and others a harmony of all parts of the body. Again, others have remarked that it is the most subtile and fine part of the blood, which is separated from it in the brain and is distributed by the nerves: so that the source of the Soul is the heart where it is produced, and the place where it performs its noblest function is the Brain, because there it is well purified from the grosser parts of the blood. These are the principal opinions which have been held concerning the Soul, but to render them more perceptible let us divide them into material and spiritual, and name the supporters of each theory that we may not err. III. Pythagoras and Plato have said that the soul is spiritual, that is to say, a being capable of existence without the aid of the body, and can move itself: that all the particular souls of animals are portions of the universal soul of the world: that these portions are spiritual and immortal, and of the same nature, as we may conceive that one hundred little fires are of the same nature as the great fire at which they have been kindled. IV.