(no subject)
"When a man surrenders himself to music, allowing his soul to be flooded through the channels of his ears with those sweet and soft and mournful airs we spoke of, and gives up all his time to the delights of song and melody, then at first he tempers the high-spirited part of his nature, like iron whose brittle hardness is softened to make it serviceable; but if he persists in subduing it to such incantation, he will end by melting it away altogether. He will have cut the sinews of his soul and made himself what Homer calls a faint-hearted warrior. Moreover, this result follows quickly in a temperament that is naturally spiritless; while a high-spirited one is rendered weak and unstable, readily flaring up and dying down again on slight provocation. Such men become rather irritable, bad tempered, and peevish."
-- Plato, The Republic, III.410
-- Plato, The Republic, III.410