the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and
sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing
how to implant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of
our art, as our friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not
only medicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are
under his dominion. Any one who pays the least attention to the subject
will also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of
opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of
Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that The One
is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the lyre. Now there
is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements
which are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was,
that harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which
disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music; for if the
higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be no harmony,--clearly
not. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an
agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot
harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of
elements short and long, once differing and now in accord; which
accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other
cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and
thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their
application to harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of
harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not
yet become double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in
the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres
composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty
begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be
repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and
heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who