ut to the Sirens,
Daemons that neither love nor are benevolent to mankind, wholly passing
by the Muses, or calling them by the names of the Fates, the daughters
of Necessity. For Necessity is averse to the Muses; but Persuasion being
more agreeable and better acquainted with them, in my opinion, than the
grace of Empedocles,

Intolerable Necessity abhors.

No doubt, said Ammonius, as it is in us a violent and involuntary
cause; but in the gods Necessity is not intolerable, uncontrollable, or
violent, unless it be to the wicked; as the law in a commonwealth to
the best man is its best gift, not to be violated or transgressed, not
because they have no power, but because they have no will, to change it.
And Homer's Sirens give us no just reason to be afraid; for he in that
fable rightly intimates the power of their music not to be hurtful to
man, but delightfully charming, and detaining the souls which pass
from hence thither and wander after death; working in them a love for
heavenly and divine things, and a forgetfulness of everything on earth;
and they extremely pleased follow and attend them. And from thence some
imperfect sound, and as it were echo of that music, coming to us by the
means of reason and good precepts, rouseth our souls, and restores the
notice of those things to our minds, the greatest part of which
lie encumbered with and entangled in disturbances of the flesh and
distracting passions. But the generous soul hears and remembers, and
her affection for those pleasures riseth up to the most ardent passion,
whilst she eagerly desires but is not able to free herself from the
body.

It is true, I do not approve what he says; but Plato seems to me, as he
hath strangely and unaccountably called the axes spindles and distaffs,
and the stars whirls, so to have named the Muses Sirens, as delivering
divine things to the ghosts below, as Ulysses in Sophocles says of the
Sirens,

I next to Phorcus's daughters came,
Who fix the sullen laws below.

Eight of the Muses take care of the spheres, and one of all about the
earth. The eight who govern the motions of the spheres maintain the
agreement of the planets with the fixed stars and one another. But that
one who looks after the place betwixt the earth and moon and takes care
of mortal things, by means of discourse and song introduceth persuasion,
aiding our natural consent to community and agreement, and giveth men
as much harmony, grace, and ord