No More Learning

48! .
In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," would say: No, facts are precisely what lacking, all that exists consists of interpreta tions. We cannot establish any fact " in itself ": may even be nonsense to desire to do such thing, " Everything subjective," ye say: but that in self interpretation. The "subject"
? given, but something superimposed by fancy, som e_
. nothing\
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? THE WILL TO POWER' IN SCIENCE.
thing 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
it has not one sense behind but hundreds of senses. --" Perspectivity. "
our needs that inteqoret the world; our in stincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which 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 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 taken for granted; but up to the present every
body believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion "I think," and that by analogy with our under standing-of all other causal reactions this "I" was the given muse of the thinking. However custom ary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imagin
interpreted a'gflerently,
13
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is
? THE WILL TO POWER.
I4
ary nature ofits origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.
484.
"Something is thought, therefore there is some thing that thinks ": this is what Descartes' argu ment 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 formula tion 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 offact. . . . On Descartes'
? lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith.
Ifthe 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! Ifwe sur render the concept soul, "the subject," the very conditions for the concept " substance ? ' are lack
ing. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost.
? ? ? ? '
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. I!
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: 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," " substantial ity. "--" 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 similis ing and adjusting of them is the fact--nut their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).
486.
One would have to know what Being in order to be able to decide whether this or that real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness ");
would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth--But, as we do not know these things, criticism of the faculty of knowledge nonsensical: how possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even de fine itself!
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? I6 THE WILL 'TO POWER.
487.
Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend P--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
? ? ? ? Everything
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
I7
the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the mul tiplicity 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 organ ise the appropriated mass, it divides into two. On the other hand, it is able, without destroying
to transform weaker subject into one of its own functionaries, and, to certain extent, to compose a new entity with- it. Not "substance," but rather something which in itself strives after
greater strength; and which wishes to "preserve" itself only indirectly wishes to surpass itself).
489.
that reaches consciousness as an "entity" already enormously complicated: we
'never have anything more than the semblance an entity.
The phenomenon of the body the richer, more VOL. 11.
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.
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? 18 ' THE WILL TO POWER.
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 P Of course an aristocracy Of equals, who are accus tomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how to command P
My hypotheses: The subject as a plurality.
Pain intellectual and dependent upon the
judgment " harmful," projected.
The effect always " unconscious ": the in
ferred 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 com manding 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
? ? ? ATHE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
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 P--We obtain correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that to say, as number of regents at the head of community (not as "souls " or as " life-forces as also of the depend ence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of hierarchy, and of the division of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain correct image of the way in which the living entities con tinually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the "subject we realise that the struggle finds expression in obey
ing as well as in commanding, and that fluctuat ing definition of the limits of power factor of life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler
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 valua tion even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsifica tion, and of perspective. What most important, however, that we regard the ruler and his sub
? 19
? as of the same hind, all feeling, willing, thinking--and that wherever we see or suspect movement in body, we conclude that there
jects
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co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Move ment as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought.
The danger of directly questioning thesubjectcon ceming the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection. consists in this, that it might be a necessary con dition 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 or KNOWLEDGE. PERSPECTIVITY.
493
Trut/i 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-pres ervation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in pro
portion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase.
495
? \
If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie " be re futed, the sense for truth will then have to justify
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 21
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 eogm'sanee 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 ex cessively 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 pendingfurther investigation; for instance, the law of causation is
? ? ? ? 22 THE WILL TO POWER.
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 conclu sion! 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 P--We should not have it did we not need to have and we should not have
we did not need as we need we could live otherwise.
499
" Thinking " in
bersevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal--In our thought, the essential factor the harmonising of the new material with the old schemes (= Pro crustes' bed), the assimilation of the unfamiliar.
500.
The perception" of the senses projected out wards: " inwards and " outwards "--does the
body command here?
The same equalising and Ordering power which
rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorpora tion of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation
as we have --that to say,
? primitive (inorganic) state to
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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,' 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 amoeba. 0f the nutritive matter it appropriates.
" Memory " late, in so far as the equalising in stinct appears to have been suoa'uea' : the difference is preserved. Memory--a process of classification and collocation; active--who?
23
? 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, irre spective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live "in the memory"; I have noth ing to do with it when memory "comes," my will is inactive in regard to as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which become conscious: now some
thing similar comes--who has called forth? Who has awakened it?
* The German word verglez'clzen, meaning " to compare,' contains the ruOt "equal" (glez'e/z) which cannot be rendered in English--TR.
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? 24
THE WILL TO POWER.
503.
The whole apparatus of knowledge is an ab stracting 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 appro priated (--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-ordina tion and knowledge of impressiofis,--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 con sciousness 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 per
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
25
meated by valuations (useful or harmful--conse
quently, pleasant or painful). Every particular colour; besides being a colour, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit or do so only after has affected us exclusively for long time, as in the case of convicts in gaol or lunatics). In sects likewise react in different ways to different colours: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are case in point.
506.
In the beginning images--how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, ap plied to images. Finally conceots, possible only when there are words--the assembling of several pictures into whole which not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word " generates,----that then,' which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word used,--this simple emotion the common factor, the basis of a concept That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same,
the fundamental fact. There therefore con fusion of two very intimately associated feelings the ascertainment of these feelings ;--but who
that ascertains? Faith the very first step in
? every sensual impression:
the first intellectual activity
to-be-true " the beginning.
therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing
to-be-true" arose! the comment " true
" What sensation lies beneath a.
sort of yea-saying A " holding-a-thing
were our business,
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? 26 THE WILL TO POWER.
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 know ledge have been developed only in view of the con ditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that ex
perience has taught the usefulness of these things to life: not their "truth. "
The pre-requisites 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 aflearance
I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We have posited our conditions of existence as the attri butes 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
? ? ? ? THE WILL'TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
27
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 the first condition for " similar souls. " For the purpose of mutual understanding andgovernment.
510.
Concerning the origin oflogic. The fundamental proneness to equalise things and to see them equal, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what useful or harmful--in fact, by considerations of success then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in milder way, without at the same time denying life or en dangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process
? its symbol) by which the protoplasm con tinually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what appropriates, and arranges according to its own forms and requirements.
511.
Likeness and Similarity.
1. The coarser the organ the more apparent
likenesses sees;
2. The mind will have likeness--that to say,
the identification of one sensual impression with others already experienced: just as the body assimilates inorganic matter.
(which
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is a it
:
it
is
is
: it
is
-_'-~---, ' P
? 28 THE WILL TO POWER.
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 ofa will which would fain have it as similar as possible.
512.
Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted that identical eases 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 in
stinct rules here, which is capable of employing both means: first, falsification; and secondly,thecarrying 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 meta physical 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 experime'nt have tested and
? ? ? ? a- . .
proved efiicient, at last enters consciousness as law, as dominant. And then the whole group of related values and conditions become part of it:
becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true; a necessary part of its evolution that its origin should be forgotten. . That sign that 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 whole, and when they appealed to consciousness as
whole,-when belief in them was commanded,-- that to say, when they acted as they com manded. 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 certain practicality answering the ends of race and species,--their usefulness alone their "truth. "
515
The object 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, 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
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
29
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. . .
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? 30
THE \VILL TO POWER.
undergoes, is the development of reason! ) No
"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 at tempts 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 idiosyn crasy 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 ofinaoility.
pre-existing
? ? ? ? _.
have mere world of appearance as its first condition. As matter of fact, we believe in that proposition, under the influence of an endless
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
If, according to Aristotle, the princzpium contra dictwnzls the most certain of all principles;
the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every demonstration; the principle of every other
axiom lie within' it: then one should
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 these had become known in some other sphere--that to say, as were impossible to ascribe the opposite attributes to or the proposi tion 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 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 "P In order to affirm the first alternative, however, one would, as we have seen, require previous knowledge of Being; which certainly not the case. The pro
position 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 proposition presupposes, and that
mathematical)
A in itself an appearance, then logic would
analyse
31
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is
is
is if
is a
if
____. ~_,' _
a
is a
if it
. . .
it ;
it
is
if it
? 32
THE WILL TO POWER.
empiricism which seems to confirm it every minute. The " thing "--that is the real sub stratum 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 however, once more the world of appearance .
The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and negation, the holding of thing for true, and the holding of thing for not true,--in so far as they do not only presuppose mere habit, but the very right 'to postulate truth or untruth at all,--are already dominated by belief, that there such a thing as knowledge for us, and that judgments can really hit the truth: in short, logic never doubts that able to pronounce something concerning truth in itself (--that to say, that to the thing which 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 cannot at the same
? moment of time say of one and the same
that hard and soft. (The instinctive proof, " cannot have two opposite sensations at once,"
quite coarse and false. ) ,
That all contradiction in concepts should be
thing
? ? is I
is
it is
it
is
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a
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a
a
.
is,
? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
forbidden, the result of belief, that we are able to form concepts, that concept not only character ises but also holds the essence of thing. . . . As matter of fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only holds good of assumed existences which we have
created. Logic the attempt on our part to under stand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised ourselves or, more exactly, 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, necessary to acknowledge that
~which exists: logic only deals with formula: for things which are constant. That why this acknowledgment would not in the least prove reality: "that which " part of our optics. The "ego" regarded as Being (not affected by either Becoming or evolution).
The assumed world of subject, substance, "reason,"etc. , necessary: an adjusting, simplify ing, falsifying, artificially-separating power resides in us. " Truth " the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach consciousness;
in the " true nature " of things
Becoming not susceptible of formulation;
~ " false " and " contradicts itself. " Knowledge and
VOL. II.
regard
phenomena
The character of the world in the process of
as real).
(we
33
? the will to classify phenomena according to definite categories. In this way we start out with a belief
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is is
;
a
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is
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it is
it
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