THE WILL TO POWER
AN ATTEMPTED
TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES
By
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
VOL. II
BOOKS III AND IV
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
Edited by Dr Oscar Levy
Volume Seventeen
T.N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1913
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
Third Book. the Principles of a New Valuation.
I. The Will to Power in Science—
(a) The Method of Investigation [3]
(b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology [5]
(c) The Belief in the "Ego." Subject [12]
(d) Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Perspectivity [20]
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic [26]
(f) Consciousness [38]
(g) Judgment. True—False [43]
(h) Against Causality [53]
(i) The Thing-in-Itself and Appearance [62]
(k) The Metaphysical Need [74]
(l) The Biological Value of Knowledge [96]
(m) Science [99]
II. The Will to Power in Nature—
1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World [109]
2. The Will to Power as Life—
(a) The Organic Process [123]
(b) Man [132]
3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations [161]
III. The Will to Power As Exemplified in Society and
in the Individual
1. Society and the State [183]
2. The Individual [214]
IV. The Will to Power in Art [239]
Fourth Book. Discipline and Breeding.
I. The Order of Rank—
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank [295]
2. The Strong and the Weak [298]
3. The Noble Man [350]
4. The Lords of the Earth [360]
5. The Great Man [366]
6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future [373]
II. Dionysus [388]
III. Eternal Recurrence [422]
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
For the history of the text constituting this volume I would refer readers to my preface to The Will to Power, Books I, and II., where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the complete work.
In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various departments of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to art, and to metaphysics.
Throughout Part I. of the Third Book we find him going to great pains to impress the fact upon us that science is as arbitrary as art in its mode of procedure, and that the knowledge of the scientist is but the outcome of his inexorable will to power interpreting facts in the terms of the self-preservative conditions of the particular order of human beings to which he belongs. In Aphorisms 515 and 516, which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part I., Nietzsche says distinctly: "The object is not 'to know,' but to schematise,—to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs require."
Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great danger: hence, everything must be explained, assimilated, and rendered capable of calculation, if Nature is to be mastered and controlled.
Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense—always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable.
Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of digestion which compels an organism to make things "like" (to "assimilate") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amœba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknowledged to be merely a form of the same fundamental will.
An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least necessary, but only a sign of inability.
The whole argument of Part I. tends to draw science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux.
In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which "creates the impression of Being out of Becoming" (Aph. 517).
According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear altogether (Aph. 523), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolutionary form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would also have required to have been deified.
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism—in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped, are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond (eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself (God Omniscient).
With the question of Truth we find Nietzsche quite as ready to uphold his thesis as with all other questions. He frankly declares that "the criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power" (Aph. 534), and thus stands in diametrical opposition to Spencer, who makes constraint or inability the criterion of truth. (See Principles of Psychology, new edition, chapter ix.... "the unconceivableness of its negation is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition.")
However paradoxical Nietzsche's view may seem, we shall find that it is actually substantiated by experience; for the activity of our senses certainly convinces us more or less according to the degree to which it is provoked. Thus, if we walked for long round a completely dark room, and everything yielded, however slightly, to our touch, we should remain quite unconvinced that we were in a room at all, more particularly if—to suppose a still more impossible case—the floor yielded too. What provokes great activity in the bulbs of our fingers, then, likewise generates the sensation of truth.
From this Nietzsche proceeds to argue that what provokes the strongest sentiments in ourselves is also true to us, and, from the standpoint of thought, "that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength" (Aph. 533).
The provocation of intense emotion, and therefore the provocation of that state in which the body is above the normal in power, thus becomes the index to truth; and it is a very remarkable thing that two prominent English thinkers should, at the very end of their careers, have practically admitted this, despite the fact that all their philosophical productions had been based upon a completely different belief. I refer, of course, to Spencer and Buckle, who both upheld the view that in a system of thought the emotional factor is of the highest importance.
It follows from all this, that lies and false doctrines may quite conceivably prove to be even more preservative to species than truth itself, and although this is a view we have already encountered in the opening aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, in Aph, 538 this volume we find it further elucidated by Nietzsche's useful demonstration of the fact that "the easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way"; and that logic, inasmuch as it facilitated classification and orderly thought, ultimately "got to act like truths."
Before leaving Part I., with which it would be impossible to deal in full, a word or two ought to be said in regard to Nietzsche's views concerning the belief in "cause and effect." In the Genealogy of Morals (1st Essay, Aph. 13), we have already read a forecast of our author's more elaborate opinions on this question, and the aphorism in question might be read with advantage in conjunction with the discussion on the subject found in this book (Aphs. 545-555).
The whole of Nietzsche's criticism, however, resolves itself into this, that the doctrine of causality begins with an unnecessary duplication of all that happens. Language, and its origin among a people uneducated in thoughts and concepts, is at the root of this scientific superstition, and Nietzsche traces its evolution from the primeval and savage desire always to find a "doer" behind every deed: to find some one who is responsible and who, being known, thus modifies the unfamiliarity of the deed which requires explaining. "The so-called instinct of causality [of which Kant speaks with so much assurance] is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar."
In Aph. 585 (A), we have a very coherent and therefore valuable exposition of much that may still seem obscure in Nietzsche's standpoint, and we might almost regard this aphorism as the key to the epistemology of the Will to Power. When we find the "will to truth" defined merely as "the longing for a stable world," we are in possession of the very leitmotiv of Nietzsche's thought throughout Part I., and most of what follows is clearly but an elaboration of this thought.
In Part II. Nietzsche reveals himself as utterly opposed to all mechanistic and materialistic interpretations of the Universe. He exalts the spirit and repudiates the idea that mere pressure from without—naked environment—is to be held responsible (and often guilty!) for all that materialistic science would lay at its door. Darwin again comes in for a good deal of sharp criticism; and, to those who are familiar with the nature of Nietzsche's disagreement with this naturalist, such aphorisms as Nos. 643, 647, 649, 651, 684, 685, will be of special interest. There is one question of great moment, which all Nietzsche's perfectly sincere and profoundly serious deprecation of the Darwinian standpoint ought to bring home to all Englishmen who have perhaps too eagerly endorsed the conclusions of their own British school of organic evolution, and that is, to what extent were Malthus, and afterwards his disciple Darwin, perhaps influenced in their analysis of nature by preconceived notions drawn from the state of high pressure which prevailed in the thickly-populated and industrial country in which they both lived?
It is difficult to defend Darwin from the fundamental attack which Nietzsche directs at the very root of his teaching, and which turns upon the question of the motive of all Life's struggle. To assume that the motive is always a "struggle for existence" presupposes the constant presence of two conditions—want and over-population,—an assumption which is absolutely non-proven, and it likewise lends a peculiarly ignoble and cowardly colouring to the whole of organic life, which not only remains unsubstantiated in fact, but which the struggle for power completely escapes. In Part III., which, throughout, is pretty plain sailing, Aphorism 786 contains perhaps the most important statements. Here morality is shown to be merely an instrument, but this time it is the instrument of the gregarious will to power. In the last paragraph of this aphorism Nietzsche shows himself quite antagonistic to Determinism, because of its intimate relation to, and its origin in, a mechanistic interpretation of the Universe. But we should always remember that, inasmuch as Nietzsche would distribute beliefs, just as others distribute bounties—that is to say, according to the needs of those whom he has in view, we must never take for granted that a belief which he deprecates for one class of man ought necessarily, according to him, to be denied another class.
Hard as it undoubtedly is to bear this in mind, we should remember that his appeal is almost without interruption made to higher men, and that doctrines and creeds which he condemns for them he would necessarily exalt in the case of people who were differently situated and otherwise constituted. Christianity is a case in point (see Will to Power, vol. i. Aph. 132).
We now come to Part IV., which is possibly the most important part of all, seeing that it treats of those questions which may be regarded as Nietzsche's most constant concern from the time when he wrote his first book.
The world as we now see and know it, with all that it contains which is beautiful, indifferent, or ugly, from a human standpoint, is, according to Nietzsche, the creation of our own valuing minds. Perhaps only a few people have had a hand in shaping this world of values. Maybe their number could be counted on the fingers of two hands; but still, what Nietzsche insists upon is, that it is human in its origin. Our whole outlook, everything that gives us joy or pain, must at one time or other have been valued for us, and in persisting in these valuations we, as the acclimatised herd, are indebted to our artists, to our higher men, to all those in history, who at some time or other have dared to stand up and to declare emphatically that this was ugly and that that was beautiful, and to fight, and if necessary to die, for their opinion.
Religion, morality, and philosophy, while they all aim at so-called universal Truth, tend to depreciate the value of life in the eyes of exceptional men. Though they establish the "beautiful" for the general stock, and in that way enhance the value of life for that stock, they contradict higher men's values, and, by so doing, destroy their innocent faith in the world. For the problem here is not, what value is true?—but, what value is most conducive to the highest form of human life on earth?
Nietzsche would fain throw all the burden of valuing upon the Dionysian artist him who speaks about this world out of the love and plenitude of power that is in his own breast, him who, from the very health that is within him, cannot look out upon life without transfiguring it, hallowing it, blessing it, and making it appear better, bigger, and more beautiful. And, in this view, Nietzsche is quite consistent; for, if we must accept his conclusion that our values are determined for us by our higher men, then it becomes of the highest importance that these valuers should be so constituted that their values may be a boon and not a bane to the rest of humanity.
Alas! only too often, and especially in the nineteenth century, have men who lacked this Dionysian spirit stood up and valued the world; and it is against these that Nietzsche protests. It is the bad air they have spread which he would fain dispel.
An to what art means to the artist himself, apart from its actual effect on the world, Nietzsche would say that it is a manner of discharging his will to power. The artist tries to stamp his opinion of what is desirable, and of what is beautiful or ugly, upon his contemporaries and the future; it is in this valuing that his impulse to prevail finds its highest expression. Hence the instinctive economy of artists in sex matters—that is to say, in precisely that quarter whither other men go when their impulse to prevail urges them to action. Nietzsche did not of course deny the sensual nature of artists (Aph. 815); all he wished to make plain was this, that an artist who was not moderate, in eroticis, while engaged upon his task, was open to the strongest suspicion.
In the Fourth Book Nietzsche is really at his very best. Here, while discussing questions such as "The Order of Rank," he is so thoroughly in his exclusive sphere, that practically every line, even if it were isolated and taken bodily from the context, would bear the unmistakable character of its author. The thought expressed in Aphorism 871 reveals a standpoint as new as it is necessary. So used have we become to the practice of writing and legislating for a mass, that we have forgotten the rule that prevails even in our own navy—that the speed of a fleet is measured by its slowest vessel.
On the same principle, seeing that all our philosophies and moralities have hitherto been directed at a mass and at a mob, we find that their elevation must of necessity be decided by the lowest of mankind. Thus all passions are banned, because base men do not know how to enlist them in their service. Men who are masters of themselves and of others, men who understand the management and privilege of passion, become the most despised of creatures in such systems of thought, because they are confounded with the vicious and licentious; and the speed of mankind's elevation thus gets to be determined by humanity's slowest vessels.
Aphorisms 881, 882, 886 fully elucidate the above considerations, while in 912, 916, 943, and 951 we have plans of a constructive teaching which the remainder of Part I. elaborates.
And now, following Nietzsche carefully through Part II. (Dionysus), what is the inevitable conclusion of all we have read? This analysis of the world's collective values and their ascription to a certain "will to power" may now seem to many but an exhaustive attempt at a new system of nomenclature, and little else. As a matter or fact it is very much more than this. By mean? of it Nietzsche wishes to show mankind how much has lain, and how much still lies, in man's power By laying his finger on everything and declaring to man that it was human will that created it. Nietzsche wished to give man the courage of this will, and a clean conscience in exercising it. For it was precisely this very will to power which had been most hated and most maligned by everybody up to Nietzsche's time.
Long enough, prompted by the fear of attributing any one of his happiest thoughts to this hated fundamental will, had man ascribed all his valuations and all his most sublime inspirations to something outside himself,—whether this something were a God, a principle, or the concept Truth. But Nietzsche's desire was to show man how human, all too human, have been the values that have appeared heretofore; he wished to prove, that to the rare sculptors of values, the world, despite its past, is still an open field of yielding clay, and in pointing to what the will to power has done until now, Nietzsche suggests to these coming sculptors what might still be done, provided they fear nothing, and have that innocence and that profound faith in the fundamental will which others hitherto have had in God, Natural Laws, Truth, and other euphemistic fictions.
The doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, to which Nietzsche attached so much importance that it may be regarded almost as the inspiration which led to his great work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, ought to be understood in the light of a purely disciplinary and chastening creed. In one of his posthumous works we find Nietzsche saying: "The question which thou shalt have to answer before every deed that thou doest;—is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable number of times,—is the best ballast." Thus it is obvious that, feeling the need of something in his teaching which would replace the metaphysics of former beliefs, he applied the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence to this end. Seeing, however, that even among Nietzscheans themselves there is considerable doubt concerning the actual value of the doctrine as a ruling belief, it does not seem necessary to enter here into the scientific justification which he claims for it. Suffice it to say that, as knowledge stands at present, the statement that the world will recur eternally in small things as in great, is still a somewhat daring conjecture—a conjecture, however, which would have been entirely warrantable if its disciplinary value had been commensurate with its daring.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
[THIRD BOOK.]
THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
[I.]
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
(a) The Method of Investigation.
466.
The distinguishing feature of our nineteenth century is not the triumph of science, but the triumph of the scientific method over science.
467.
The history of scientific methods was regarded by Auguste Comte almost as philosophy itself.
468.
The great Methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte.
469.
The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods.
All methods, all the hypotheses on which the science of our day depends, were treated with the profoundest contempt for centuries: on their account a man used to be banished from the society of respectable people—he was held to be an "enemy of God," a reviler of the highest ideal, a madman.
We had the whole pathos of mankind against us,—our notion of what "truth" ought to be, of what the service of truth ought to be, our objectivity, our method, our calm, cautious and distrustful manner were altogether despicable.... At bottom, that which has kept men back most, is an æsthetic taste: they believed in the picturesque effect of truth; what they demanded of the scientist was, that he should make a strong appeal to their imagination.
From the above, it would almost seem as if the very reverse had been achieved, as if a sudden jump had been made: as a matter of fact, the schooling which the moral hyperboles afforded, gradually prepared the way for that milder form of pathos which at last became incarnate in the scientific man....
Conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for the scientific character, as was also, in a very pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them....
(b) The Starting-point of Epistemology.>
470.
Profound disinclination to halt once and for all at any collective view of the world. The charm of the opposite point of view: the refusal to relinquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.
471.
The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such a moral fashion that human reason must be right, is a mere piece of good-natured and simple-minded trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness—God regarded as the Creator of all things.—These concepts are our inheritance from a former existence in a Beyond.
472.
The contradiction of the so-called "facts of consciousness." Observation a thousand times more difficult, error is perhaps the absolute condition of observation.
473.
The intellect cannot criticise itself, simply because it can be compared with no other kind of intellect, and also because its ability to know would only reveal itself in the presence of "actual reality"; that is to say, because, in order to criticise the intellect, we should have to be higher creatures with "absolute knowledge." This would presuppose the existence of something, a "thing-in-itself," apart from all the perspective kinds of observation and senso-spiritual perception. But the psychological origin of the belief in things, forbids our speaking of "things in themselves."
474.
The idea that a sort of adequate relation exists between subject and object, that the object is something which when seen from inside would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I believe, has seen its best days. The measure of that which we are conscious of, is perforce entirely dependent upon the coarse utility of the function of consciousness: how could this little garret-prospect of consciousness warrant our asserting anything in regard to "subject" and "object," which would bear any relation to reality!
475.
Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous starting-point, as if there were such things as "facts of consciousness"—and no phenomenalism in introspection.
476.
"Consciousness"—to what extent is the idea which is thought of, the idea of will, or the idea of a feeling (which is known by us alone), quite superficial? Our inner world is also "appearance."
477.
I am convinced of the phenomenalism of the inner world also: everything that reaches our consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted, simplified, schematised, interpreted, the actual process of inner "perception," the relation of causes between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and may be purely imaginary. This "inner world of appearance" is treated with precisely the same forms and procedures as the "outer" world. We never come across a single "fact": pleasure and pain are more recently evolved intellectual phenomena....
Causality evades us; to assume the existence of an immediate causal relation between thoughts, as Logic does, is the result of the coarsest and most clumsy observation. There are all sorts of passions that may intervene between two thoughts: but the interaction is too rapid—that is why we fail to recognise them, that is why we actually deny their existence....
"Thinking," as the epistemologists understand \r it, never takes place at all: it is an absolutely gratuitous fabrication, arrived at by selecting one element from the process and by eliminating all the rest—an artificial adjustment for the purpose of the understanding....
The "mind," something that thinks: at times, even, "the mind absolute and pure"—this concept is an evolved and second result of false introspection, which believes in "thinking": in the first place an act is imagined here which does not really occur at all, i.e. "thinking"; and, secondly, a subject-substratum is imagined in which every process of this thinking has its origin, and nothing else—that is to say, both the action and the agent are fanciful.
478.
Phenomenalism must not be sought in the wrong quarter: nothing is more phenomenal, or, to be more precise, nothing is so much deception, as this inner world, which we observe with the "inner sense."
Our belief that the will is a cause was so great, that, according to our personal experiences in general, we projected a cause into all phenomena (i.e. a certain motive is posited as the cause of all phenomena).
We believe that the thoughts which follow one upon the other in our minds are linked by some sort of causal relation: the logician, more especially, who actually speaks of a host of facts which have never once been seen in reality, has grown accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts are the cause of thoughts.
We believe—and even our philosophers believe it still—that pleasure and pain are the causes of reactions, that the very purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For hundreds of years, pleasure and pain have been represented as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we are bound to concede that everything would have proceeded in exactly the same way, according to precisely the same sequence of cause and effect, if the states "pleasure" and "pain" had been entirely absent; and that we are simply deceived when we believe that they actually cause anything:—they are the attendant phenomena, and they have quite a different purpose from that of provoking reactions; they are in themselves effects involved in the process of reaction which takes place.
In short: Everything that becomes conscious is a final phenomenon, a conclusion—and is the cause of nothing; all succession of phenomena in consciousness is absolutely atomistic.—And we tried to understand the universe from the opposite point of view—as if nothing were effective or real, save thinking, feeling, willing! ...
479.
The phenomenalism of the "inner world!" A chronological inversion takes place, so that the cause reaches consciousness as the effect.—We know that pain is projected into a certain part of the body although it is not really situated there; we have learnt that all sensations which were ingenuously supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, as a matter of fact, conditioned by the inner world: that the real action of the outer world never takes place in a way of which we can become conscious.... That fragment of the outer world of which we become conscious, is born after the effect produced by the outer world has been recorded, and is subsequently interpreted as the "cause" of that effect....
In the phenomenalism of the "inner world," the chronological order of cause and effect is inverted. The fundamental fact of "inner experience" is, that the cause is imagined after the effect has been recorded.... The same holds good of the sequence of thoughts: we seek for the reason of a thought, before it has reached our consciousness; and then the reason reaches consciousness first, whereupon follows its effect. All our dreams are the interpretation of our collective feelings with the view of discovering the possible causes of the latter; and the process is such that a condition only becomes conscious, when the supposed causal link has reached consciousness.[1]
The whole of "inner experience" is founded on this: that a cause is sought and imagined which accounts for a certain irritation in our nerve-centres, and that it is only the cause which is found in this way which reaches consciousness; this cause may have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause—it is a sort of groping assisted by former "inner experiences," that is to say, by memory. The memory, however, retains the habit of old interpretations,—that is to say, of erroneous causality,—so that "inner experience" comprises in itself all the results of former erroneous fabrications of causes. Our "outside world," as we conceive it every instant, is indissolubly bound up with the old error of cause: we interpret by means of the schematism of "the thing," etc.
"Inner experience" only enters consciousness when it has found a language which the individual can understand—that is to say, a translation of a certain condition into conditions with which he is familiar; "understand" means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of something old or familiar. For instance, "I feel unwell"—a judgment of this sort presupposes a very great and recent neutrality on the part of the observer: the simple man always says, "This and that make me feel unwell,"—he begins to be clear concerning his indisposition only after he has discovered a reason for it.... This is what I call a lack of philological knowledge; to be able to read a text, as such, without reading an interpretation into it, is the latest form of "inner experience,"—it is perhaps a barely possible form....
[1] When in our dream we hear a bell ringing, or a tapping at our door, we scarcely ever wake before having already accounted for the sound, in the terms of the dream-world we were in.—TR.
480.
There are no such things as "mind," reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or truth: they all belong to fiction, and can serve no purpose. It is not a question of "subject and object," but of a particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, regularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalised)....
Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It is therefore obvious that it increases with each advance of power....
The purpose of knowledge: in this case, as in the case of "good" or "beautiful," the concept must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation—and not some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception—stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge; ... they evolve in such a way that their observations may suffice for our preservation. In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the Will to Power grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality, in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount in its service.
(c) The Belief in the "Ego." Subject.
481.
In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. "Everything is subjective," ye say: but that in itself is interpretation. The subject is nothing given, but something superimposed by fancy, something introduced behind.—Is it necessary to set an interpreter behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis.
To the extent to which knowledge has any sense at all, the world is knowable: but it may be interpreted differently, it has not one sense behind it, but hundreds of senses.—"Perspectivity."
It is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which it would fain impose upon all the other instincts as their norm.
482.
Where our ignorance really begins, at that point from which we can see no further, we set a word; for instance, the word "I," the word "do," the word "suffer"—these concepts may be the horizon lines of our knowledge, but they are not "truths."
483.
Owing to the phenomenon "thought," the ego is taken for granted; but up to the present everybody believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion "I think," and that by analogy with our understanding of all other causal reactions this "I" was the given cause of the thinking. However customary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imaginary nature of its origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.
484.
"Something is thought, therefore there is something that thinks": this is what Descartes' argument amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion "substance" as an "a priori" truth:—that there must be something "that thinks" when we think, is merely a formulation of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here—and it is not merely an ascertainment of fact.... On Descartes' lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith.
If the proposition be reduced to "Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the "reality of thought," is not touched upon,—so that, in this form, the apparitional character of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was, that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.
485.
The concept substance is an outcome of the concept subject, and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, the subject, the very conditions for the concept "substance" are lacking. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost.
Criticism of "reality": what does a "plus or minus of reality" lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe?
The degree of our feeling of life and power (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of "Being," "reality," "non-appearance."
Subject i this is the term we apply to our belief in an entity underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality; we regard this belief as the effect of a cause,—and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine "truth," "reality," "substantiality."—a "Subject" is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first created the "similarity" of these states; the similising and adjusting of them is the fact—not their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).
486.
One would have to know what Being is, in order to be able to decide whether this or that is real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness"); it would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth.—But, as we do not know these things, a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is nonsensical: how is it possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even define itself!
487.
Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend?—that is to say, our belief in the "ego" as a substance, as the only reality according to which, alone, we are able to ascribe reality to things? The oldest realism at length comes to light, simultaneously with man's recognition of the fact that his whole religious history is no more than a history of soul-superstitions. Here there is a barrier; our very thinking, itself, involves that belief (with its distinctions—substance, accident, action, agent, etc.); to abandon it would mean to cease from being able to think.
But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities.
488.
The psychological origin of our belief in reason.—The ideas "reality," "Being," are derived from our subject-feeling.
"Subject," interpreted through ourselves so that the ego may stand as substance, as the cause of action, as the agent.
The metaphysico-logical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc. etc., draws its convincing character from our habit of regarding all our actions as the result of our will: so that the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of changes.—But there is no such thing as will. We have no categories which allow us to separate a "world as thing-in-itself," from "a world of appearance." All our categories of reason have a sensual origin: they are deductions from the empirical world. "The soul," "the ego"—the history of these concepts shows that here, also, the oldest distinction ("spiritus," "life") obtains....
If there is nothing material, then there can be nothing immaterial. The concept no longer means anything.
No subject-"atoms." The sphere of a subject increasing or diminishing unremittingly, the centre of the system continually displacing itself, in the event of the system no longer being able to organise the appropriated mass, it divides into two. On the other hand, it is able, without destroying it, to transform a weaker subject into one of its own functionaries, and, to a certain extent, to compose a new entity with it. Not a "substance," but rather something which in itself strives after greater strength; and which wishes to "preserve" itself only indirectly (it wishes to surpass itself).
489.
Everything that reaches consciousness as an entity is already enormously complicated: we never have anything more than the semblance of an entity.
The phenomenon of the body is the richer, more distinct, and more tangible phenomenon: it should be methodically drawn to the front, and no mention should be made of its ultimate significance.
490.
The assumption of a single subject is perhaps not necessary, it may be equally permissible to assume a plurality of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the bottom of our thought and our consciousness in general. A sort of aristocracy of "cells" in which the ruling power is vested? Of course an aristocracy of equals, who are accustomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how to command?
My hypotheses. The subject as a plurality. Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment harmful, projected. The effect always "unconscious": the inferred and imagined cause is projected, it follows the event. Pleasure is a form of pain. The only kind of power that exists is of the same nature as the power of will: a commanding of other subjects which thereupon alter themselves. The unremitting transientness and volatility of the subject. "Mortal soul." Number as perspective form.
491.
The belief in the body is more fundamental than the belief in the soul: the latter arose from the unscientific observation of the agonies of the body. (Something which leaves it. The belief in the truth of dreams)
492.
The body and physiology the starting-point: why?—We obtain a correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that is to say, as a number of regents at the head of a community (not as "souls" or as "life-forces") as also of the dependence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of a hierarchy, and of the division of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain a correct image of the way in which the living entities continually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the "subject"; we realise that the struggle finds expression in obeying as well as in commanding, and that a fluctuating definition of the limits of power is a factor of life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler is kept, of the individual performances and even disturbances taking place in the community, also belong to the conditions under which government may be carried on. In short, we obtain a valuation even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things-generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsification, and of perspective. What is most important, however, is, that we regard the ruler and his subjects as of the same kind, all feeling, willing, thinking—and that wherever we see or suspect movement in a body, we conclude that there is co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Movement as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought.
The danger of directly questioning the subject concerning the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection, consists in this, that it might be a necessary condition of its activity to interpret itself erroneously. That is why we appeal to the body and lay the evidence of sharpened senses aside: or we try and see whether the subjects themselves cannot enter into communication with us.
(d) Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Perspectivity.
493.
Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. The value for Life is ultimately decisive.
494.
It is unlikely that our "knowledge" extends farther than is exactly necessary for our self-preservation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in proportion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase.
495.
If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie" be refuted, the sense for truth will then have to justify itself before another tribunal—as a means to the preservation of man, as Will to Power.
Likewise our love of the beautiful: it is also the creative will. Both senses stand side by side; the sense of truth is the means wherewith the power is appropriated to adjust things according to one's taste. The love of adjusting and reforming—a primeval love! We can only take cognisance of a world which we ourselves have made.
496.
Concerning the multifariousness of knowledge. The tracing of its relation to many other things (or the relation of kind)—how should "knowledge" be of another? The way to know and to investigate is in itself among the conditions of life; that is why the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for ourselves) than the kind which serves the purpose of our preservation is an excessively hasty one: this actual condition may be only an accidental, not in the least an essential; one.
Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not adjusted for knowledge.
497.
The most strongly credited a priori "truths" are, to my mind, mere assumptions pending further investigation; for instance, the law of causation is a belief so thoroughly acquired by practice and so completely assimilated, that to disbelieve in it would mean the ruin of our kind. But is it therefore true? What an extraordinary conclusion! As if truth were proved by the mere fact that man survives!
498.
To what extent is our intellect also a result of the conditions of life?—We should not have it did we not need to have it, and we should not have it as we have it, if we did not need it as we need it—that is to say, if we could live otherwise.
499.
Thinking in a primitive (inorganic) state is to persevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal.—In our thought, the essential factor is the harmonising of the new material with the old schemes (= Procrustes' bed), the assimilation of the unfamiliar.
500.
The perception of the senses projected outwards: "inwards" and "outwards"—does the body command here?
The same equalising and ordering power which rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorporation of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation and harmonisation in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the "impression."
501.
All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of comparing[2] has as a first condition the act of equalising, and earlier still the act of "making equal." The process of making equal is the same as the assimilation by the amœba of the nutritive matter it appropriates.
"Memory" late, in so far as the equalising instinct appears to have been subdued: the difference is preserved. Memory—a process of classification and collocation; active—who?
[2] The German word vergleichen, meaning "to compare," contains the root "equal" (gleich) which cannot be rendered in English. TR.
502.
In regard to the memory, we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a "soul," which, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live "in the memory"; I have nothing to do with it when memory "comes," my will is inactive in regard to it, as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which I become conscious: now something similar comes—who has called it forth? Who has awakened it?
503.
The whole apparatus of knowledge is an abstracting and simplifying apparatus—not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things: "end" and "means" are as remote from the essence of this apparatus as "concepts" are. By the "end" and the "means" a process is appropriated (—a process is invented which may be grasped), but by "concepts" one appropriates the "things" which constitute the process.
504.
Consciousness begins outwardly as co-ordination and knowledge of impressions,—at first it is at the point which is remotest from the biological centre of the individual; but it is a process which deepens and which tends to become more and more an inner function, continually approaching nearer to the centre.
505.
Our perceptions, as we understand them—that is to say, the sum of all those perceptions the consciousness whereof was useful and essential to us and to the whole organic processes which preceded us: therefore they do not include all perceptions (for instance, not the electrical ones);—that is to say, we have senses only for a definite selection of perceptions—such perceptions as concern us with a view to our self-preservation. Consciousness extends so far only as it is useful. There can be no doubt that all our sense-perceptions are entirely permeated by valuations (useful or harmful—consequently, pleasant or painful). Every particular colour; besides being a colour, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after it has affected us exclusively for a long time, as in the case of convicts in gaol or lunatics). Insects likewise react in different ways to different colours: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are a case in point.
506.
In the beginning images how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words—the assembling of several pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word" generates,—that is, then, which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word is used,—this simple emotion is the common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same, is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a confusion of two very intimately associated feelings in the ascertainment of these feelings;—but who is it that ascertains? Faith is the very first step in every sensual impression: a sort of yea-saying is the first intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business, therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing-to-be-true" arose! What sensation lies beneath the comment "true"?
507.
The valuation, "I believe that this and that is so," is the essence of "truth." In all valuations, the conditions of preservation and of growth find expression. All our organs and senses of knowledge have been developed only in view of the conditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that experience has taught the usefulness of these things to life: not their "truth." The prerequisites of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt at all concerning all essential values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true, not that it is true.
"The real world and the world of appearance"— I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We have posited our conditions of existence as the attributes of being in general. Owing to the fact that, in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief, we developed the idea that the real world was neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a world of being.
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic.
508.
Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished—and are still perishing.
509.
The kingdom of desires out of which logic grew: the gregarious instinct in the background. The assumption of similar facts is the first condition for "similar souls." For the purpose of mutual understanding and government.
510.
Concerning the origin of logic. The fundamental proneness to equalise things and to see them equal, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what is useful or harmful—in fact, by considerations of success: it then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder way, without at the same time denying life or endangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which the protoplasm continually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what it appropriates, and arranges it according to its own forms and requirements.
511.
Likeness and Similarity.
1. The coarser the organ the more apparent likenesses it sees;
2. The mind will have likeness—that is to say, the identification of one sensual impression with others already experienced: just as the body assimilates inorganic matter.
For the understanding of Logic:—
The will which tends to see likeness everywhere is the will to power—the belief that something is so and so (the essence of a judgment), is the result of a will which would fain have it as similar as possible.
512.
Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted that identical cases exist. As a matter of fact, before one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, this condition must first be assumed. That is to say, the will to logical truth cannot be consummated before a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has been assumed. From which it follows that an instinct rules here, which is capable of employing both means: first, falsification; and secondly, the carrying out of its own point of view: logic does not spring from a will to truth.
513.
The inventive force which devised the categories, worked in the service of our need of security, of quick intelligibility, in the form of signs, sounds, and abbreviations.—"Substance," "subject," "object," "Being," "Becoming," are not matters of metaphysical truth. It was the powerful who made the names of things into law, and, among the powerful, it was the greatest artists in abstraction who created the categories.
514.
A moral—that is to say, a method of living which long experience and experiment have tested and proved efficient, at last enters consciousness as a law, as dominant.... And then the whole group of related values and conditions become part of it: it becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true; a necessary part of its evolution is that its origin should be forgotten.... That is a sign that it has become master. Exactly the same thing might have happened with the categories of reason: the latter, after much groping and many trials, might have proved true through relative usefulness.... A stage was reached when they were grasped as a whole, and when they appealed to consciousness as a whole,—when belief in them was commanded,—that is to say, when they acted as if they commanded.... From that time forward they passed as a priori, as beyond experience, as irrefutable. And, possibly, they may have been the expression of no more than a certain practicality answering the ends of a race and a species,—their usefulness alone is their "truth."
515.
The object is, not "to know," but to schematise,—to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos, as our practical needs require. In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was a need in us that was the determining power: not the need "to know," but to classify, to schematise, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment and interpretation of all similar and equal things,—the same process, which every sensual impression undergoes, is the development of reason!) No pre-existing "idea" had anything to do with it: but utility, which teaches us that things can be reckoned with and managed, only when we view them roughly as equal.... Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: Life degenerates with every other form of reason, although constant attempts are being made to attain to those other forms of reason;—for Life would then become too obscure, too unequal.
The categories are "truths" only in the sense that they are the conditions of our existence, just as Euclid's Space is a conditional "truth." (Between ourselves, as no one will maintain that men are absolutely necessary, reason, as well as Euclid's Space, are seen to be but an idiosyncrasy of one particular species of animals, one idiosyncrasy alone among many others....)
The subjective constraint which prevents one from contradicting here, is a biological constraint: the instinct which makes us see the utility of concluding as we do conclude, is in our blood, we are almost this instinct.... But what simplicity it is to attempt to derive from this fact that we possess an absolute truth! ... The inability to contradict anything is a proof of impotence but not of "truth."
516.
We are not able to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: that is a principle of subjective experience—which is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inability.
If, according to Aristotle, the principium contradictionis is the most certain of all principles; if it is the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every demonstration; if the principle of every other axiom lie within it: then one should analyse it all the more severely, in order to discover how many assumptions already lie at its root. It either assumes something concerning reality and Being, as if these had become known in some other sphere—that is to say, as if it were impossible to ascribe the opposite attributes to it; or the proposition means: that the opposites should not be ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an imperative, not directed at the knowledge of truth, but at the adjusting and fixing of a world which must seem true to us.
In short, the question is a debatable one: are the axioms of logic adequate to reality, or are they measures and means by which alone we can, create realities, or the concept "reality"?... In order to affirm the first alternative, however, one would, as we have seen, require a previous knowledge of Being; which is certainly not the case. The proposition therefore contains no criterion of truth, but an imperative concerning that which should pass as true.
Supposing there were no such thing as A identical with itself, as every logical (and mathematical) proposition presupposes, and that A is in itself an appearance, then logic would have a mere world of appearance as its first condition. As a matter of fact, we believe in that proposition, under the influence of an endless empiricism which seems to confirm it every minute. The "thing"—that is the real substratum of A; our belief in things is the first condition of our faith in logic. The A in logic is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the thing.... By not understanding this, and by making logic into a criterion of real being, we are already on the road to the classification of all those hypostases, substance, attribute, object, subject, action, etc., as realities—that is to say, the conception of a metaphysical world or a "real world" (—this is, however, once more the world of appearance...).
The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and negation, the holding of a thing for true, and the holding of a thing for not true,—in so far as they do not only presuppose a mere habit, but the very right to postulate truth or untruth at all,—are already dominated by a belief, that there is such a thing as knowledge for us, and that judgments can really hit the truth: in short, logic never doubts that it is able to pronounce something concerning truth in itself (—that is to say, that to the thing which is in itself true, no opposite attributes can be ascribed).
In this belief there reigns the sensual and coarse prejudice that our sensations teach us truths concerning things,—that I cannot at the same moment of time say of one and the same thing that it is hard and soft. (The instinctive proof, "I cannot have two opposite sensations at once," is quite coarse and false.)
That all contradiction in concepts should be forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we are able to form concepts, that a concept not only characterises but also holds the essence of a thing.... As a matter of fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only holds good of assumed existences which we have created. Logic is the attempt on our part to understand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is our attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation, for our own purposes....
517.
In order to be able to think and to draw conclusions, it is necessary to acknowledge that which exists: logic only deals with formulæ for things which are constant. That is why this acknowledgment would not in the least prove reality: "that which is" is part of our optics. The ego regarded as Being (not affected by either Becoming or evolution).
The assumed world of subject, substance, reason, etc., is necessary, an adjusting, simplifying falsifying, artificially-separating power resides in us. "Truth" is the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is the will to classify phenomena according to definite categories. In this way we start out with a belief in the "true nature" of things (we regard phenomena as real).
The character of the world in the process of Becoming is not susceptible of formulation; it is "false" and "contradicts itself." Knowledge and the process of evolution exclude each other. Consequently, knowledge must be something else: it must be preceded by a will to make things knowable, a kind of Becoming in itself must create the illusion of Being.
518.
If our "ego" is the only form of Being, according to which we make and understand all Being: very good! In that case it were very proper to doubt whether an illusion of perspective were not active here—the apparent unity which everything assumes in our eyes on the horizon-line. Appealing to the body for our guidance, we are confronted by such appalling manifoldness, that for the sake of method it is allowable to use that phenomenon which is richer and more easily studied as a clue to the understanding of the poorer phenomenon.
Finally: admitting that all is Becoming, knowledge is only possible when based on a belief in Being.
519.
If there is "only one form of Being, the ego," and all other forms of Being are made in its own image,—if, in short, the belief in the "ego," together with the belief in logic, stands and falls with the metaphysical truth of the categories of reason: if, in addition, the "ego" is shown to be something that is evolving: then——
520.
The continual transitions that occur, forbid our speaking of the "individual," etc.; the "number" of beings itself fluctuates. We should know nothing of time or of movement, if, in a rough way, we did not believe we saw things "standing still" behind or in front of things moving. We should also know just as little about cause and effect, and without the erroneous idea of "empty space" we should never have arrived at the concept of space at all. The principle of identity is based on the "fact of appearance" that there are some things alike. Strictly speaking, it would not be possible to "understand" and "know" an evolving world; something which is called "knowledge" exists only in so far as the "understanding" and "knowing" intellect already finds an adjusted and rough world to hand, fashioned out of a host of mere appearances, but become fixed to the extent in which this kind of appearance has helped to preserve life; only to this extent is "knowledge" possible—that is to say, as a measuring of earlier and more recent errors by one another.
521.
Concerning logical appearance.—The concept "individual" and the concept "species" are equally false and only apparent. "Species" only expresses the fact that an abundance of similar creatures come forth at the same time, and that the speed of their further growth and of their further transformation has been made almost imperceptible for a long time: so that the actual and trivial changes and increase of growth are of no account at all (—a stage of evolution in which the process of evolving is not visible, so that, not only does a state of equilibrium seem to have been reached, but the road is also made clear for the error of supposing that an actual goal has been reached—and that evolution had a goal...).
The form seems to be something enduring, and therefore valuable; but the form was invented merely by ourselves; and however often "the same form is attained," it does not signify that it is the same form,—because something new always appears; and we alone, who compare, reckon the new with the old, in so far as it resembles the latter, and embody the two in the unity of "form." As if a type had to be reached and were actually intended by the formative processes.
Form, species, law, idea, purpose—the same fault is made in respect of all these concepts, namely, that of giving a false realism to a piece of fiction: as if all phenomena were infused with some sort of obedient spirit—an artificial distinction is here made between that which acts and that which guides action (but both these things are only fixed in order to agree with our metaphysico-logical dogma: they are not "facts").
We should not interpret this constraint in ourselves, to imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws ("a world of identical cases") as if we were in a position to construct a real world; but as a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our existence will be ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.
The very same constraint is active in the functions of the senses which support the reason—by means of simplification, coarsening, accentuation, and interpretation; whereon all "recognition," all the ability of making one's self intelligible rests. Our needs have made our senses so precise, that the "same world of appearance" always returns, and has thus acquired the semblance of reality.
Our subjective constraint to have faith in logic, is expressive only of the fact that long before logic itself became conscious in us, we did nothing save introduce its postulates into the nature of things: now we find ourselves in their presence,—we can no longer help it,—and now we would fain believe that this constraint is a guarantee of "truth." We it was who created the "thing," the "same thing," the subject, the attribute, the action, the object, the substance, and the form, after we had carried the process of equalising, coarsening, and simplifying as far as possible. The world seems logical to us, because we have already made it logical.
522.
Fundamental solution.—We believe in reason: this is, however, the philosophy of colourless concepts. Language is built upon the most naïf prejudices.
Now we read discord and problems into things, because we are able to think only in the form of language—we also believe in the "eternal truth" of "wisdom" (for instance, subject, attribute, etc.).
We cease from thinking if we do not wish to think under the control of language; the most we can do is to attain to an attitude of doubt concerning the question whether the boundary here really is a boundary.
Rational thought is a process of interpreting according to a scheme which we cannot reject.
(f) Consciousness.
523.
There is no greater error than that of making psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two manifestations of the same substance. By this means nothing is explained: the concept "substance" is utterly useless as a means of explanation. Consciousness may be regarded as secondary, almost an indifferent and superfluous thing, probably destined to disappear and to be superseded by perfect automatism—
When we observe mental phenomena we may be likened to the deaf and dumb who divine the spoken word, which they do not hear, from the movements of the speaker's lips. From the appearance of the inner mind we draw conclusions concerning invisible and other phenomena, which we could ascertain if our powers of observation were adequate for the purpose.
For this inner world we have no finer organs, and that is why a complexity which is thousandfold reaches our consciousness as a simple entity, and we invent a process of causation in it, despite the fact that we can perceive no cause either of the movement or of the change—the sequence of thoughts and feelings is nothing more than their becoming visible to consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a chain of causes is not worthy of belief: consciousness never communicates an example of cause and effect to us.
524.
The part "consciousness" plays,—It is essential that one should not mistake the part that "consciousness plays" it is our relation to the outer world; it was the outer world that developed it. On the other hand, the direction—that is to say, the care and cautiousness which is concerned with the inter-relation of the bodily functions, does not enter into our consciousness any more than does the storing activity of the intellect: that there is a superior controlling force at work in these things cannot be doubted—a sort of directing committee, in which the various leading desires make their votes and their power felt. "Pleasure" and "pain" are indications which reach us from this sphere: as are also acts of will and ideas.
In short: That which becomes conscious has causal relations which are completely and absolutely concealed from our knowledge—the sequence of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, in consciousness, does not signify that the order in which they come is a causal order: it is so apparently, however, in the highest degree. We have based the whole of our notion of intellect, reason, logic, etc., upon this apparent truth (all these things do not exist: they are imaginary syntheses and entities), and we then projected the latter into and behind all things!
As a rule consciousness itself is understood to be the general sensorium and highest ruling centre; albeit, it is only a means of communication: it was developed by intercourse, and with a view to the interests of intercourse.... "Intercourse" is understood, here, as "relation," and is intended to cover the action of the outer world upon us and our necessary response to it, as also our actual influence upon the outer world. It is not the conducting force, but an organ of the latter.
525.
My principle, compressed into a formula which savours of antiquity, of Christianity, Scholasticism, and other kinds of musk: in the concept, "God is spirit," God as perfection is "denied...."
526.
Wherever people have observed a certain unity in the grouping of things, spirit has always been regarded as the cause of this co-ordination: an assumption for which reasons are entirely lacking. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of that fact? Or why should the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause?
We must be on our guard against explaining finality by the spirit: there is absolutely no reason whatever for ascribing to spirit the peculiar power of organising and systematising. The domain of the nervous system is much more extensive: the realm of consciousness is superadded. In the collective process of adaptation and systematising, consciousness plays no part at all.
527.
Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it gains in clearness: the most lucid consciousness and the most logical and impassive thought are of the first order. Meanwhile—according to what standard is this value determined?—In regard to the discharge of will-power the most superficial and most simple thought is the most useful—it might therefore, etc. etc. (because it leaves few motives over).
Precision in action is opposed to the far-sighted and often uncertain judgments of caution: the latter is led by the deeper instinct.
528.
The chief error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as of a lower kind than the distinct; but that which keeps at a distance from our consciousness and which is therefore obscure, may on that very account be quite clear in itself. The fact that a thing becomes obscure is a question of the perspective of consciousness.
529.
The great misapprehensions:—
(1) The senseless overestimation of consciousness, its elevation to the dignity of an entity: "a spirit," "a soul," something that feels, thinks, and wills;
(2) The spirit regarded as a cause, especially where finality, system, and co-ordination appear;
(3) Consciousness classed as the highest form attainable, as the most superior kind of being, as "God";
(4) Will introduced wherever effects are observed;
(5) The "real world" regarded as the spiritual world, accessible by means of the facts of consciousness;
(6) Absolute knowledge regarded as the faculty of consciousness, wherever knowledge exists at all.
Consequences:—
Every step forward consists of a step forward in consciousness; every step backwards is a step into unconsciousness (unconsciousness was regarded as a falling-back upon the passions and senses—as a state of animalism ....)
Man approaches reality and real being through dialectics: man departs from them by means of instincts, senses, and automatism....
To convert man into a spirit, would mean to make a god of him: spirit, will, goodness—all one.
All goodness must take its root in spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness.
Every step made towards something better can be only a step forward in consciousness.