e purchased."

And Plato's notable sentence in the third book of the _Polity_.--"Tell
them they have divine gold and silver in their souls for ever; that they
need no money stamped of men--neither may they otherwise than impiously
mingle the gathering of the divine with the mortal treasure, _for
through that which the law of the multitude has coined, endless crimes
have been done and suffered; but in their's is neither pollution nor
sorrow_."

90. At the entrance of this place of punishment an evil spirit is seen
by Dante, quite other than the "Gran Nemico." The great enemy is obeyed
knowingly and willingly; but this spirit--feminine--and called a
Siren--is the "_Deceitfulness_ of riches," [Greek: apate ploutou] of the
Gospels, winning obedience by guile. This is the Idol of riches, made
doubly phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream. She is lovely to
look upon, and enchants by her sweet singing, but her womb is loathsome.
Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens carelessly, any more than
he speaks of Charybdis carelessly; and though he had got at the meaning
of the Homeric fable only through Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the
clue he has given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpretation, "the
Sirens, _or pleasures_," which has become universal since his time, is
opposed alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The Sirens are not
pleasures, but _Desires_: in the Odyssey they are the phantoms of vain
desire; but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phantoms of divine desire;
singing each a different note on the circles of the distaff of
Necessity, but forming one harmony, to which the three great Fates put
words. Dante, however, adopted the Homeric conception of them, which was
that they were demons of the Imagination, not carnal; (desire of the
eyes; not lust of the flesh); therefore said to be daughters of the
Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly or historical but of the Muse of
pleasure; and they are at first winged, because even vain hope excites
and helps when first formed; but afterwards, contending for the
possession of the imagination with the Muses themselves, they are
deprived of their wings.

91. And thus we are to distinguish the Siren power from the power of
Circe, who is no daughter of the Muses, but of the strong elements, Sun
and Sea; her power is that of frank, and full vital pleasure, which, if
governed and watched, nourishes men; but, unwatched, and having no
"moly," bitterness or delay, mixed wi