Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/400

378 deviseth to itself an expectation of inevitable evils even after death.

The impiety of an atheist hath none of all this gear; most true it is, that his ignorance is unhappy, and that a great calamity and misery it is unto the soul, either to see amiss or wholly to be blinded, in so great and worthy things, as having of many eyes the principal and clearest of all, to wit, the knowledge of God, extinct and put out; but surely (as I said before) this passionate fear, this ulcer and sore of conscience, this trouble of spirit, this servile abjection is not in his conceit; these go always with the other, who have such a superstitious opinion of the gods. Plato saith that music was given unto men by the gods, as a singular means to make them more modest and gracious, yea, and to bring them as it were into tune, and cause them to be better conditioned, and not for delight and pleasure, nor to tickle the ears: for falling out as it doth many times, that for default and want of the Muses and Graces there is great confusion and disorder in the periods and harmonies, the accords and consonances of the mind, which breaketh out otherwhiles outrageously by means of intemperance and negligence; music is of that power that it setteth everything again in good order and their due place; for according as the poet Pindarus saith:

Insomuch as they fall into fits of rage therewith, and be very fell and angry; like as it is reported of tigers, who if they hear the sound of drums or tabours round about them, will grow furious and stark mad, until in the end they tear themselves in pieces: so that there cometh less harm unto them who by reason of deafness or hard hearing have no sense at all of music, and are nothing moved and affected therewith: a great infortunity this was of blind Tiresias, that he could not see his children and friends, but much more unfortunate and unhappy were Athamas and Agave, who seeing their children, thought they saw lions and stags. And no doubt when Hercules fell to be enraged and mad, better it had been and more expedient for him, that he had not seen nor known his own children than so to deal with those who were most dear unto him, and whom he loved more than all the world besides, as if they had been his mortal enemies.