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Posted by Immanuel Kant on April 22, 2000 at 10:53:52:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Just Say No! posted by moonlightmile on April 21, 2000 at 21:45:44:
I'm a fleabit peanut monkey
All my friends are junkies
That's not really true --
Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider lyrics, which it cannot ignore, as they are written by its own nature, but which it cannot explain, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.
I'm a cold Italian pizza
I could use a lemon squeezer
What you do?
It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience.
But I've been bit and I've been tossed around
By every she-rat in this town
Haven't you, babe?
With these principles it rises, in
obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it
quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new
guitarists never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have
recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded
by common sense without distrust.
Well, I am just a monkey man
I'm glad you are a monkey woman too
It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysics.
I was bitten by your boar
I was gouged and I was gored
But I pulled on through
Time was, when she was the queen of all the sciences; and, if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honour. Now, it is the fashion of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her; and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba:
Modo maxima rerum,
Tot generis, natisque potens...
Nunc trahor exul, inops.*
(* Well I am just a monkey man
I'm glad you are a monkey, monkey woman too, babe)
At first, her government, under the administration of the dogmatists, was an absolute
despotism. But, as the legislative continued to show traces of the ancient barbaric rule,
her empire gradually broke up, and intestine wars introduced the reign of anarchy; while
the sceptics, like nomadic tribes, who hate a permanent habitation and settled mode of
living, attacked from time to time those who had organized themselves into civil
communities. But their number was, very happily, small; and thus they could not entirely
put a stop to the exertions of those who persisted in raising new
edifices, although on no settled or uniform plan.
Yes, I'm a sack of broken eggs
I always have an unmade bed
Don't you?
In recent times the hope dawned upon us of seeing those disputes settled, and the
legitimacy of her claims established by a kind of physiology of the human understanding-
that of the celebrated Locke. But it was found
that- although it was affirmed that this so-called queen could not refer her descent to
any higher source than that of common experience,
a circumstance which necessarily brought suspicion on her claims- as this genealogy was
incorrect, she persisted in the advancement of
her claims to sovereignty. Thus metaphysics necessarily fell back into the antiquated and
rotten constitution of dogmatism, and again
became obnoxious to the contempt from which efforts had been made to save it.
Well, I hope we're not too messianic
Or a trifle too satanic
We love to play the blues
At present, as all methods, according to the general persuasion, have been tried in vain, there reigns nought but weariness and complete indifferentism- the mother of chaos and night in the scientific world, but at the same time the source of, or at least the prelude to, the re-creation and reinstallation of a science, when it has fallen into confusion, obscurity, and disuse from ill directed effort.
Well I am just a monkey man
And I'm glad you are a monkey woman
Monkey Woman too, babe
For it is in reality vain to profess indifference in regard to such inquiries, the
object of which cannot be indifferent to humanity.
Besides, these pretended indifferentists, however much they may try to disguise themselves
by the assumption of a popular style and by changes on the language of the lyrics,
unavoidably fall into
metaphysical declarations and propositions, which they profess to regard with so much
contempt. At the same time, this indifference, which has arisen in the world of music, and
which relates to that kind of knowledge which we should wish to see destroyed the last, is
a phenomenon that well deserves our attention and reflection.
I'm a monkey
I'm a monkey
I'm a monkey man
I'm a monkey man
I'm a monkey...