e body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best
physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to
convert one into the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to
implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile
elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful
practitioner. Now 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 d