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