Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
These Sirens sing for their pleasure divine and heavenly tunes, and
accompany their sacred circuit and dance with an harmonious song of
eight notes. Nor was there necessity of a fuller chorus, in regard that
within the confines of eight notes lay the first bounds and limits of
all duple and triple proportions; the unit being added to both the even
and odd numbers. And certainly from hence it was that the ancients
raised their invention of nine Muses; of which eight were employed in
celestial affairs, as Plato said; the ninth was to take care of things
terrestrial, and to reduce and reform the inequality and confusion of
error and jarring variance.
33. Now then consider whether the soul does not roll and turn and
manage the heavens and the celestial bodies by means of those
harmonious concords and equal motions that are wrought and fermented
within her, being herself most wise and most just. And such she became
by virtue of harmonical proportions, whose images representing things
incorporeal are imprinted into the discernible and visible parts and
bodies of the world. But the chief and most predominating power is
visibly mixed in the soul, which renders her harmonious and obedient
to herself, the other parts unanimously yielding to her as the most
supreme and the divinest part of all. For the Sovereign Artificer and
Creator finding a strange disorder and erroneous confusion in the
motions of the decomposed and unruly soul, which was still at variance
with herself, some things he divided and separated, others he brought
together and reconciled to a mutual sympathy, making use of harmony and
numbers. By virtue of which, the slightest and meanest of insensible
substances, even stocks and stones, the rinds of trees, and sometimes
even the rennets of beasts, by various mixtures, compositions, and
temperatures, may become the charming objects of the sight, or afford
most pleasing perfumes and wholesome medicaments for the relief of
mankind, or be wrought and hollowed to send forth pleasing musical
sounds. And for this reason it was that Zeno of Citium encouraged and
persuaded youth to frequent the theatres, there to observe the variety
of melodious sounds that proceeded from horns or cornets, wooden
hautboys, flutes and reeds, or any other musical instruments to which
the contrivance of art had rightly applied the reason of number and
proportion. Not that we will here maintain, with the Pythagoreans, that
all things resemble number, for that requires a long discourse to prove
it. But where mutual society and sympathy arise out of discord and
dissimilitude, that the cause of this is moderation and order, produced
by the power of harmony and number, was a thing not concealed even from
the poets. And these give to what is friendly and kind the epithet
“evenly fitted;” while, on the other side, men of rugged and malicious
dispositions they called “unevenly tempered,” as if enmity and discord
were nothing but a sort of a disproportion.
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