On Tranquillity of Mind (15)

This, then, is a matter disturbing to tranquillity

of mind; and another, even more disturbing, arises when, like flies which slip off the smooth surfaces of mirrors, but stick to places which are rough or scratched, men drift away from joyous and agreeable matters and become entangled in the remembrance of unpleasant things; or rather, as they relate that when beetles have fallen into a place at Olynthus which is called Death-to-Beetles, [*] they are unable to get out, but turn and circle about there until they die in that place, so when men have slipped into brooding upon their misfortunes, they do not wish to recover or revive from that state. But, like colours in a painting,b so in the soul it is right that we should place in the foreground bright and cheerful experiences and conceal and suppress the gloomy; for to wipe them out and be rid of them altogether is impossible. For the harmony of the universe, like that of a lyre or a bow, is by alternatives, [*] and in mortal affairs there is nothing pure and unmixed. But as in music there are low notes and high notes, and in grammar there are vowels and consonants, yet a musician or a grammarian is not the man who dislikes and avoids the one or the other, but rather the man who knows how to use all and to blend them properly,[*] so also in human affairs, which contain the principles of opposition to each other (since, as Euripides[*] has it,

The good and bad cannot be kept apart,

But there’s some blending, so that all is well),

we should not be disheartened or despondent in adversity, but like musicians who achieve harmony by consistently deadening bad music with better and encompassing the bad with the good, we should make the blending of our life harmonious and conformable to our own nature. For it is not true, as Menander[*] says, that

By every man at birth a Spirit stands,

A guide of virtue for life’s mysteries;

but rather, as Empedocles[*] affirms, two Fates, as it were, or Spirits, receive in their care each one of us at birth and consecrate us:

Chthonia was there and far-seeing Heliope,

And bloody Deris, grave-eyed Harmonia,

Callisto, Aeschra, Thoosa, and Denaea,

Lovely Nemertes, dark-eyed Asapheia.