Erreygers Guido wrote:
> ----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
> In response to Carlos Rodriguez Braun's query about Borges, Mill and
> music:
>
> "And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general
> tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously
> tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations.
> The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones, which can be
> put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small
> proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been
> already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of
> Mozarts and Webers, to strike out as these had done, entirely new and
> surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty."
>
> John Stuart Mill, *Autobiography*, Chapter V [The Collected Works of
> John Stuart Mill, Vol. I, p. 149]
>
> Guido Erreygers


   
The tone of the Mill quotation suggests that he may have thought better 
of this idea later.  But what an odd idea.  We have only 26 letters in 
English, so by Mill's reasoning we should be running out of "entirely 
new and surprisingly rich veins" of things to write . . . on the HES 
list (among other places).

Kevin Hoover