But when you want to use them in actual life, either in
the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres
composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty
begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be
repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and
heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who
are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of
preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be
used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate
licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate
the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the
attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in
all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as
far as may be, for they are both present.
The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and when,
as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the
harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they
bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm;
whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons
of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of
pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and
plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and
disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the
revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed
astronomy.
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