The Human Soul Is Like God, the Designing Fire

The human soul is also like god, fiery. Starting with chrysippus, it is identified with a kind of warm breath. Thanks to this breath, living animals possess a vital heat that spreads along with the soul through the body just as god, the designing fire, spreads through the cosmo. The stoics naturally locate the centre of the soul where we find the centre of heat,. namely, as aristotle too had said, the heart. It is here, not in the brain, that we find the soul's so called hegemonicon, or commanding faculty.