Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
But there is no mirror that more exactly represents any shape or
form, nor any instrument that yields more obsequiously to the use of
Nature, than the Moon herself. And yet she, receiving from the Sun his
masculine splendor and fiery light, does not transmit the same to us;
but when it intermixes with her pellucid substance, it changes color
and loses its power. For warmth and heat abandon the pale planet, and
her light grows dim before it can reach our sight. And this is that
which, in my opinion, Heraclitus seems to have meant, when he said
that the prince who rules the oracle of Delphi neither speaks out
nor conceals, but signifies. Add then to these things thus rightly
spoken this farther consideration, that the Deity makes use of the
Pythian prophetess, so far as concerns her sight and hearing, as the
Sun makes use of the Moon; for he makes use of a mortal body and an
immortal soul as the organs of prediction. Now the body lies dull and
immovable of itself; but the soul being restless, when once the soul
begins to be in motion, the body likewise stirs, not able to resist
the violent agitation of the nimbler spirit, while it is shaken and
tossed as in a stormy sea by the tempestuous passions that ruffle
within it. For as the whirling of bodies that merely move circularly
is nothing violent, but when they move round by force and tend
downward by nature, there results from both a confused and irregular
circumrotation; thus that divine rapture which is called enthusiasm is
a commixture of two motions, wherewith the soul is agitated, the one
extrinsic, as by inspiration, the other by nature. For, seeing that as
to inanimate bodies, which always remain in the same condition, it is
impossible by preternatural violence to offer a force which is contrary
to their nature and intended use, as to move a cylinder spherically
or cubically, or to make a lyre sound like a flute, or a trumpet like
a harp; how is it possible to manage an animate body, that moves of
itself, that is indued with reason, will, and inclination, otherwise
than according to its pre-existent reason, power, or nature; as (for
example) to incline to music a person altogether ignorant and an utter
enemy to music, or to make a grammarian of one that never knew his
letters, or to make him speak like a learned man that never understood
the least tittle of any science in the world?
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