The Joyful Wisdom ("La Gaya Scienza"): Complete Works, Volume Ten
Nietzsche · en
But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially
_meaningless_ world! Supposing we valued the _worth_ of a music with
reference to how much it could be counted, calculated, or formulated
--how absurd such a "scientific" estimate of music would be! What
would one have apprehended, understood, or discerned in it! Nothing,
absolutely nothing of what is really "music" in it!...
374.
_Our new "Infinite"_--How far the perspective character of existence
extends, or whether it have any other character at all, whether
an existence without explanation, without "sense" does not just
become "nonsense," whether, on the other hand, all existence is not
essentially an _explaining_ existence--these questions, as is right and
proper, cannot be determined even by the most diligent and severely
conscientious analysis and self-examination of the intellect, because
in this analysis the human intellect cannot avoid seeing itself in its
perspective forms, and _only_ in them. We cannot see round our corner:
it is hopeless curiosity to want to know what other modes of intellect
and perspective there _might_ be: for example, whether any kind of
being could perceive time backwards, or alternately forwards and
backwards (by which another direction of life and another conception
of cause and effect would be given). But I think that we are to-day
at least far from the ludicrous immodesty of decreeing from our nook
that there _can_ only be legitimate perspectives from that nook. The
world, on the contrary, has once more become "infinite" to us: in
so far we cannot dismiss the possibility that it _contains infinite
interpretations._ Once more the great horror seizes us--but who would
desire forthwith to deify once more _this_ monster of an unknown
world in the old fashion? And perhaps worship _the_ unknown thing as
_the_ "unknown person" in future? Ah! there are too many _ungodly_
possibilities of interpretation comprised in this unknown, too much
devilment, stupidity and folly of interpretation,--our own human, all
too human interpretation itself, which we know....
375.