This ‘diagoge’ is a highly significant word. It means literally the ‘passing’ or ‘spending’ of time, but to render it by ‘pastime’ is only admissible if one has Aristotle’s attitude to work and leisure. “Nowadays”, he says, “most people practise music for pleasure, but the ancients gave it a place in education (Paideia), because nature requires us not only be able to work well but also to idle well…..This idleness or leisure is the principle of the universe, for Aristotle.
Now this happiness, i.e. the cessation of striving after that which one has not, is the ‘telos’. But all human do not find it in the same thing. It will, moreover, be best where those who enjoy are best and their aspirations are noblest. Hence it is clear that we must educate ourselves to this diagoge and learn certain things – not, be it noted, for the sake of work, but for their own sake. For this reason our forefathers reckoned music as Paideia – education, culture; as something neither necessary nor useful, like reading and writing, but only serving to pass one’s free time.