[The Banquet (Il Convito) by Dante Alighieri]@TWC D-Link book
The Banquet (Il Convito)

CHAPTER XIV
7/9

And these two properties are in Music, which is all relative, as is seen in harmonized words and in songs, from which the sweeter harmony results in proportion as the relation is more beautiful, which in this Science is especially beautiful, because there is in it a special harmony.
Again, Music attracts to itself human spirits, which are as it were chiefly vapours from the heart, so that they almost cease from all labour; so is the whole soul when it hears it, and the power of all those spirits flies as it were to the spirit of sense, which receives the sound.
And the Heaven of Jupiter can be compared to Geometry because of two properties.

The one is, that it moves between two Heavens, repugnant to its good tempering, namely, that of Mars and that of Saturn.

Hence Ptolemy says, in the book alluded to, that Jupiter is a star of a temperate complexion, midway between the cold of Saturn and the heat of Mars.

The other is, that amongst all the stars it appears white, as if silvered.

And these things are in the Science of Geometry.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books