Paphnutius
DISCIPLES.[1] Why do you look so gloomy, father Paphnutius? Why do you not smile at us as usual?
PAPHNUTIUS. When the heart is sad the face clouds over. It is only natural.
DISCIPLES. But why are you sad?
PAPHNUTIUS. I grieve over an injury to my Creator.
DISCIPLES. What injury?
PAPHNUTIUS. The injury His own creatures made in His very image inflict on Him.
DISCIPLES. Oh, father, your words fill us with fear! How can such things be?
PAPHNUTIUS. It is true that the impassible Majesty cannot be hurt by injuries. Nevertheless, speaking in metaphor, and as if God were weak with our weakness, what greater injury can we conceive than this—that while the greater world is obedient, and subject to His rule, the lesser world resists His guidance?
DISCIPLES. What do you mean by the lesser world?
PAPHNUTIUS. Man.
DISCIPLES. Man?
PAPHNUTIUS. Yes.
DISCIPLES. What man?
PAPHNUTIUS. Every man.
DISCIPLES. How can this be?
PAPHNUTIUS. It has pleased our Creator.
DISCIPLES. We do not understand.
PAPHNUTIUS. It is not plain to many.
DISCIPLES. Explain, father.
PAPHNUTIUS. Be attentive, then.
DISCIPLES. We are eager to learn.
PAPHNUTIUS. You know that the greater world is composed of four elements which are contraries, yet by the will of the Creator these contraries are adjusted in harmonious arrangement. Now, man is composed of even more contrary parts.
DISCIPLES. What can be more contrary than the elements?
PAPHNUTIUS. The body and the soul. The soul is not mortal like the body, nor the body spiritual as is the soul.
DISCIPLES. That is true. But what did you mean, father, when you spoke of “harmonious arrangement”?
PAPHNUTIUS. I meant that as low and high sounds harmoniously united produce a certain music, so discordant elements rightly adjusted make one world.
DISCIPLES. It seems strange that discords can become concords.
PAPHNUTIUS. Consider. No thing is composed of “likes”—neither can it be made up of elements which have no proportion among themselves, or which are entirely different in substance and nature.
DISCIPLES. What is music, master?
PAPHNUTIUS. One of the branches of the “quadrivium” of philosophy, my son. Arithmetic, geometry, music, and philosophy form the quadrivium.
DISCIPLES. I should like to know why they are given that name.
PAPHNUTIUS. Because just as paths branch out from the quadrivium, the place where four roads meet, so do these subjects lead like roads from one principle of philosophy.
DISCIPLES. We had best not question you about the other three, for our slow wits can scarcely follow what you have told us about the first.
PAPHNUTIUS. It is a difficult subject.
DISCIPLES. Still you might give us a general idea of the nature of music.
PAPHNUTIUS. It is hard to explain to hermits to whom it is an unknown science.
DISCIPLES. Is there more than one kind of music?
PAPHNUTIUS. There are three kinds, my son. The first is celestial, the second human, the third is produced by instruments.
DISCIPLES. In what does the celestial consist?
PAPH