The Bicameral System of Culture 199tery of the world and was sacred to him; for this very reason, however,
his "desecrating clutching" could not shrink back from it He wrote with
a forced courage that came close to invalidating his own love of music:
"No music is profound and meaningful in itself; it does not speak of the
'will' or the 'thing in itself'" (2,175; HHl § 215). Only a philosophically
cultivated and perhaps miseducated intellect reads a so-called deeper sig-
nificance into it. We only "fancy" that a colossal power speaks through
music In fact, though, it is the history of symbols, habits of listening,
techniques, projections, feelings, and misunderstandings that we are
hearing. Music is "empty noise" (2,176; HHl § 216) upon which mean-
ing is gradually superimposed by way of childhood memories, associa-
tions of images, and physical responses. It is not a "direct language of
feeling" (2,176).
These remarks are decidedly mean-spirited. Nietzsche targeted every-
thing that looked and sounded like more than it was. We can well imag-
ine the fury of Richard Wagner when he read these words. Cosima
Wagner remarked tersely: "I know that evil has won out here" (15,84;
Chronik).
Nietzsche prescribed himself a regimen of sobriety in order to pre-
vent the "profoundly aroused feelings" of poets, musicians, philoso-
phers, and religious enthusiasts from "overpowering" him (2,204; HHl
§ 244). These feelings needed exposure to the spirit of science, "which
renders us somewhat colder and more skeptical in general and in partic-
ular cools down the scorching current of belief in ultimate truths"
(2,204). Nietzsche called the era of grand redemptive feelings in meta-
physics, religion, and art a "tropical" epoch and predicted the imminent
approach of a "tempered" cultural climate (2,198; HH I § 236). He
sought to bring about and accelerate this change of climate, although it
unsetded him as well. He knew that the cooling process also held dan-
gers inherent in the "shallowness and externalization" (2,199; HHl §
237) of life.
In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche forged ahead with his cooling-
down experiment, but just as a play's protagonist sometimes adds an