For this reason, he who writes Pindar’s elegy gives him this encomium, To foreigners agreeable, to citizens a friend;[198] the poet plainly inferring complacency of humor and the aptitude of a person to fit himself to all tempers to be an excellency aspiring to virtue itself. Which Pindar himself also testifies, saying of Cadmus, that he listened to true music from Apollo himself.[199] Nor must we believe that the theologists, who were the most ancient philosophers, ordered the pictures and statues of the Gods to be made with musical instruments in their hands because they thought the Gods no better than pipers or harpers, but to signify that no work was so becoming to the Gods as accord and harmony. Now then, as it would be absurd and ridiculous for any man to search for sesquiterces, sesquialters, and duples in the neck, or belly, or sides of a lute or harp,—though every one of these must also be allowed their symmetry of length and thickness,—the harmony and proportion of concords being to be sought for in the sound; so it is most probable that the bodies of the stars, the distances of spheres, and the swiftness of the motions and revolutions, have their sundry proportions, as well one to another as to the whole fabric, like instruments of music well set and tuned, though the measure of the quantity be unknown to us. However, we are to imagine that the principal effect and efficacy of these numbers and proportions, which the Supreme Architect made use of, is that same agreement, harmony, and consent of the soul with itself, by means of which she replenished the heavens themselves, when she came to actuate and perform her office there, with so many infinite beauties, and by which she governs the earth by virtue of the several seasons, and other alterations wisely and artificially measured and varied as well for the generation as preservation of all terrestrial productions. THAT A PHILOSOPHER OUGHT CHIEFLY TO CONVERSE WITH GREAT MEN.[200] 1. The resolution which you have taken to enter into the friendship and familiarity of Sorcanus, that by the frequent opportunities of conversing with him you may cultivate and improve a soil which gives such early promises of a plentiful harvest, is an undertaking which will not only oblige his relations and friends, but redound very much to the advantage of the public; and (notwithstanding the peevish censures of some morose or ignorant people) it is so far from being an argument of an aspiring and vain-glorious temper, that it shows you to be a lover of virtue and good manners, and a zealous promoter of the common interest of mankind.