Eryximachus.are now harmonized.
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 in 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 har-
mony, — clearly not. For harmony is a symphony, and sym-
phony 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 are as yet intemperate only that they may become tem-
perate, and of preserving their love ; and again, of the vulgar
Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the
pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate licentiousness ;
just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate
the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes with-
out the attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in
music, in medicine, in all other things human as well as
divine, both loves ought to be noted as far as may be, for they
188 are both present.
The course of the seasons is also full of both these prin- ciples ; and when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and
