Plutarchus, Moralia, Of The Tranquality of the Mind (De Tranquillitate Animi), 474a-b., §15, tr. Matthew Morgan, in: Plutarch's Morals, vol. I., edt. William Goodwin, intro. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1878, p. 158:
For as the strings of a lute or bow, so is the harmony of the world alternately tightened and relaxed by vicissitude and change;1 and in human affairs there is nothing that is unmixed, nothing that is unallied. But as in music there are some sounds which are flat and some sharp, and in grammar some letters that are vocal and some mute, but neither the man of concord nor syntax cloth industriously decline one sort, but with the fineness of his art mixeth them together; so in things in this world which carry a direct opposition in their nature one to another,— when, as Euripides expresseth it,
The good things with the evil still are joined, And in strict union mutually combined; The chequered work doth beautiful appear, For what is sweet allays the more severe;
—yet we ought not to be discouraged or have any despondencies. But in this case let us imitate the musicians, who drown the harsh cadences with others that more caress the ear; so, by tempering our adverse fortune with what is more prosperous, let us render our lives pleasant and of an equal tone. For that is not true which Menander tells us:—
Soon as an infant cloth salute the day, A genius his first cryings doth obey, And to his charge comes hastily away; The dæmon doth assist the tender lad, Shows him what's good, and saves him from the bad.
1. Cf. Heraklitus, frag. 51:
. . . οὐ ξυνιᾶσιν ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῷ ὁμολογέει· παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης . . . The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre.
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