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Show 199 parallel, Plato was hard pressed in the Symposium to explain Heraclitus' theory of Music; he found it difficult to justify rationally a statement like, "The One is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and lyre." This kind of paradox might be understood by reasoning that "everything happens by strife" is the basis of universal union - as with the bow and the lyre, so with the cosmos - it is the tension of opposing forces which makes the structure one. Muir's rock and glacier were like the lyre and the bow, and on a more fundamental level, the sun, like the fire of Heraclitus, was a permanent motive force for all change. In the woods too, the Sequoia was a symbol of permanence which attested to the flow, being the one greatest living monument to the sun. This kind of paradoxical thinking was likely to sound a bit intricate and mysterious to any Americans who were not enthusiastic Trans-cendentalists. Muir's vision, gathered in earthquakes, floods, wind storms, and blizzards, would sound apocalyptic because it discovered the divine harmony within the strife and justified the good which came out of seemingly evil chaos. Society, however, takes a dim view of storms when they occur here and now. An earthquake in the Bible is one thing, but few hear cosmic music when Mount Saint Helens erupts. The newspapers, being false gospel, call it a "killer mountain." Men are, under these circumstances, motivated by fear and thus unable to appreciate larger harmonies. President Carter, for instance, described the landscape resulting from Saint Helens* activity |