You are giving us proof to-day of how far you have succeeded in attaining unison in your own soul." "I like you in this mood!" cried Euergetes.

"I love you, sister, when you are like this! It ill becomes the eagle's brood to coo like the dove, and you have sharp talons though you hide them never so well under your soft feathers.

It is true that I am writing a treatise on harmony, and I am doing it with delight; still it is one of those phenomena which, though accessible to our perception, are imperishable, for no god even could discover it entire and unmixed in the world of realities.
Where is harmony to be found in the struggles and rapacious strife of the life of the Cosmos?
And our human existence is but the diminished reflection of that process of birth and decease, of evolution and annihilation, which is going on in all that is perceptible to our senses; now gradually and invisibly, now violently and convulsively, but never harmonyously.
"Harmony is at home only in the ideal world--harmony which is unknown even among the gods harmony, whom I may know, and yet may never comprehend--whom I love, and may never possess--whom I long for, and who flies from me.
"I am as one that thirsteth, and harmony as the remote, unattainable well--I am as one swimming in a wide sea, and she is the land which recedes as I deem myself near to it.
"Who will tell me the name of the country where she rules as queen, undisturbed and untroubled?
And which is most in earnest in his pursuit of the fair one: He who lies sleeping in her arms, or he who is consumed by his passion for her?
"I am seeking what you deem that you possess .-- Possess--! "Look round you on the world and on life--look round, as I do, on this hall of which you are so proud! It was built by a Greek; but, because the simple melody of beautiful forms in perfect concord no longer satisfies you, and your taste requires the eastern magnificence in which you were born, because this flatters your vanity and reminds you, each time you gaze upon it, that you are wealthy and powerful--you commanded your architect to set aside simple grandeur, and to build this gaudy monstrosity, which is no more like the banqueting-hall of a Pericles than I or you, Cleopatra, in all our finery, are like the simply clad gods and goddesses of Phidias.

I mean not to offend you, Cleopatra, but I must say this; I am writing now on the subject of harmony, and perhaps I shall afterwards treat of justice, truth, virtue; although I know full well that they are pure abstractions which occur neither in nature nor in human life, and which in my dealings I wholly set aside; nevertheless they seem to me worthy of investigation, like any other delusion, if by resolving it we may arrive at conditional truth.

It is because one man is afraid of another that these restraints--justice, truth, and what else you will--have received these high-sounding names, have been stamped as characteristics of the gods, and placed under the protection of the immortals; nay, our anxious care has gone so far that it has been taught as a doctrine that it is beautiful and good to cloud our free enjoyment of existence for the sake of these illusions.