er as is possible for them to take;
introducing this persuasion to appease and quiet our disturbances, and
as it were to recall our wandering desires out of the wrong way, and to
set us in the right path. But, as Pindar says,

Whom Jove abhors, he starts to hear
The Muses sounding in his ear.
(Pindar, "Pythian," i. 25.)

To this discourse Ammonius, as he used to do, subjoined that verse of
Xenophanes,

This fine discourse seems near allied to truth,

and desired every one to deliver his opinion. And I after a short
silence, said: As Plato thinks by the name, as it were by tracks, to
discover the powers of the gods, so let us place in heaven and over
heavenly things one of the Muses, Urania. And it is likely that those
require no distracting variety of cares to govern them, since they have
the same single nature for the cause of all their motions. But where are
a great many irregularities and disorders, there we must place the eight
Muses, that we may have one to correct each particular irregularity and
miscarriage. There are two parts in a man's life, the serious and the
merry; and each must be regulated and methodized. The serious role,
which instructs us in the knowledge and contemplation of the gods,
Calliope, Clio, and Thalia appear chiefly to look after and direct.
The other Muses govern our weak part, which changes presently into
wantonness and folly; they do not neglect our brutish and violent
passions and let them run their own course, but by appropriate dancing,
music, song, and orderly motion mixed with reason, bring them down to
a moderate temper and condition. For my part, since Plato admits two
principles of every action, viz, the natural desire after pleasure, and
acquired opinion which covets and wishes for the best, and calls one
reason and the other passion, and since each of these is manifold,
I think that each requires a considerable and, to speak the truth, a
divine direction. For instance, one faculty of our reason is said to be
political or imperial, over which Hesiod says Calliope presides; Clio's
province is the noble and aspiring; and Polymnia's that faculty of the
soul which inclines to attain and keep knowledge (and therefore the
Sicyonians call one of their three Muses Polymathia); to Euterpe
everybody allows the searches into nature and physical speculations,
there being no greater, no sincerer pleasure belonging to any other sort
of speculation in the world. The nat