f. Yet on the other hand he must
enjoy, which is his right in this world of sensations; each good music
must be heard. So Circe tells of the scheme of putting wax into his
companions' ears, while he is bound to the mast. Already Tiresias
warned Ulysses in the Underworld to hold his appetite in check and that
of his companions, if he wished to return home. This warning Circe now
repeats, indeed she repeats in a new mythical form her own experience,
for she, the Siren, has also been met by Ulysses and mastered. Yet
these later charmers seem to have been more dangerous. When they are
passed, a new peril rises of necessity.

2. Next we behold an image, or rather two sets of images, of the grand
dualism of existence. That escape from the Sirens is really no solution
of the problem, it is external and leaves the man still unfree, still
subject to his senses. There must be somehow an inner control through
the understanding, an intellectual subordination. But just here trouble
springs up again. The mind has two sides to it, and is certain to fall
into self-opposition. Two are the ways after parting from the Sirens,
says Circe: "I shall tell thee of both."

One way is by the Plangctae (rocks which clasp together); here no bird
can fly through without getting caught, even the doves of Zeus pay the
penalty. "No ship of men, having gone thither, has ever escaped"--except
the God-directed Argo: surely a sufficient warning. Then the second way
also leads to two rocks, but of a different kind; at their bases in the
sea are found Scylla, the monstrous sea-bitch, on one side, and
Charybdis, the yawning maelstrom, on the other; between them Ulysses
must pass with his ship and companions.

It is manifest that here are two alternatives, one after the other; the
first is that of the Plangctae, the Claspers, which mean Death, unless
they be avoided, yet this avoidance does not always mean Life. We can
trace the connection with the Sirens: the absolute resignation to the
senses is license, is destruction; we may say the same thing of the
opposite, the absolute suppression of man's sensuous being is simply
his dissolution. Hence the extremes appear; the moral and the immoral
extremes land us in the same place; they are the two mighty rocks which
may smite together and crush the poor mortal who happens to get in
between the closing surfaces. If we understand the image, it holds true
of excess on either side; excessive indulgence is overwhelme