symposium   

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 is

united by disunion, like the harmony-of 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 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 are as yet intemperate only that they may

become temperate, and of preserving their love; and again, of the