The
interpretation
of causality is an illusion.
Nietzsche - Works - v15 - Will to Power - b
?
48
THE WILL TO POWER.
o
" However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth. " But what is truth? Perhaps it-is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for in stance, in regard to causality.
533
Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth (" omne illud verum est, quad clare et distincte percwitur. "--Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible.
But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum verz'. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred, valued, and marked as true ? ---The intellect sets its freest and strongest facultyl and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true. . .
" True "--from the standpoint of sentiment-'45 that which most provokes senti
ment ("I");
from the standpoint of thought--is
that which gives thought the
greatest sensation of strength; from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing--is that which' calls
forth the greatest resistance.
? '
? ? ? THE WILL T0 POWER m scnzncs.
Thus the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its " reality. " The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there something which being resisted.
534
The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535
According to my way of thinking, " truth " does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas
"other errors might not tyrannise over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other " tyrants," could even be laid aside and " refuted. "
Why should an irrefutable assumption neces
sarily be "true "? This question may exasperate
the logicians who limit things according to the
limitations they find in themselves: but have
long since declared war with this logician's
Everything simple simply imaginary, but not
" true. " neither
v0L. it.
That which real and true however,
unity nor reducible to unity.
D
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49
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536
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THE WILL TO POWER.
537
What is truth ? ---Inertia ; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intel lectual strength, etc.
538.
First proposition. The easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way ;-- dogmatically: simplex sigillum 11eri. ---Dico: to sup pose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute
I
childishness. .
Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of
things, and of all those constant entities, is a hun dred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . . .
? Third proposition.
method of facilitating
sion,--not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .
Logic was intended to be a thought: a means of expres
539
Parmenides said: "One can form no concept of the non-existent" ;---we are at the other extreme, and say, "That of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional. "
540
There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes--therefore there must be many kinds of " truths," and consequently there can be no truth.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
51
541
Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum.
"That which necessarily true in thought must necessarily true in morality. "-- HERBERT
be SPENCER.
? . _ . _
A
" The ultimate test of the truth of proposition the inconceivableness of its negation. "---H ERBERT
SPENCER.
542
If the character of existence were false,--and this would be possible,--what would truth then be, all our truth? . An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? . .
543
In world which was essentially false, truthful ness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to higher degree of falsity. For world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created being understood that he must believe himself to be " truthful
Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to him self, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such man conceives world of Being as " God" in His own image.
In order that truthfulness may be possible, the
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THE WILL TO POWER.
whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable : the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one--Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
s44
"Dissimulation" increases in accordance with the rising order'of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. --There power opposes power quite roughly
---ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Caesar and Napoleon (see Stendhal's remark con cerning him),' as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus) ; the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man. . . . The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal. . . . The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts : the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first
? of thought itself. Before "thought" is possible, "fancy" must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is. more primeval than the cognition of identity.
* The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: "Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est
que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et a plus fort
principle
raison quand il e? crit. "
-
? ? ? appearances
cannot be "causes"!
546
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
53
AGAINST CAUSALITY.
545
I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. "Changes" are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us) ; if we set recurrence, however regular, between
them, nothing is proved- beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc, is easily explained as the result ofa misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But
(h)
? The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentia tion, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is " altered. "
s47
Psychological history of the concept "subject. " The body, the thing, the " whole," which is visual ised by the eye, awakens the thought of distin
between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the " subject " over.
guishing
? ? ? 54
THE WILL TO POWER.
548 ,
Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independentbeing, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that " it flashes. " Or even the little word "I. " A sort of double-sight in seeing
which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the " subject " of the " ego. "
549
" Subject," " object," " attribute "--these distinc tions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who " has " something, who "has" a quality.
550
In every judgment lies the whole faith in sub ject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of
activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent) ; and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most funda mental belief: there are such things as subjects,
everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort.
I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind and, above all, look for one
who has an intention, for subject, an agent:
? ? ? a
I
it,
? Question:
Is the design the cause of pheno menon Or that also illusion? Is not the phenomenon itself?
551
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
every phenomenon an action,--formerly inten tions were seen behind all phenomena, this our oldest habit. Has the. animal also this habit? I As living organism, not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question
" why " always question concerning the causafinalis, and the general " purpose " of things. We have no sign of the "sense of the 6ffiCl? Ilt cause in this respect Hume quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in
causality, not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes; but our inahility to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of de sign. It the belief in living and thinking things,
as the only agents of causation; the belief in will, in design--the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; the belief in the "subject. " Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an
arrant absurdity?
? criticism of the concept "cause. '-'--We have absolutely no experience concerning cause; viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are
causes--that to say, that the arm moves. . . But
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THE WILL TO POWER.
that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme--we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done ? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that,
as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as "Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we pro
jected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon, it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in
our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept " cause " we have em braced our feeling of will, our feeling of " freedom,"
our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efliciens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. - '
We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us. . . . On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will "act. " The thing, the subject the will, the design--all
inherent in the conception "cause. " We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the "atom" is one of these
fanciful inventions like the "thing" and the
? " primitive subject. " . . .
'
? ? ? THE WILL 'ro POWER IN SCIENCE.
57
At last we understand that things--consequently also atoms--effect nothing: because they are non existent; and that the concept causality quite useless. Out of necessary sequence of states, the latter's causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active
principle from to 2, to to 4, to 5). There
no such thing as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to
rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If imagine muscle separated from its "effects,"
have denied it.
In short: a phenomenon neither effected nor
capable of mf'ecting. Causa a faculty to effect
something, superadded fancifully to what hap
pens.
The interpretation of causality is an illusion.
A "thing" the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of concept, an image. As matter of fact, science has robbed the concept caus ality of all meaning, and has reserved merely as an allegorical formula, which has made matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant.
The calmlability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that rule observed, or that neces sity obeyed, or that we have projected law of causality into every phenomenon: lies in the recurrence of " identical cases. "
There no such thing as sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast,
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58
THE WILL TO POWER.
we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon. . . . As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known--It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar.
552
To combat determinism and teleology--From
the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has " no free will. " " Mechanical necessity " is not an established fact: it was we who first read it into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising pheno mena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. - Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the ex istence of subjects "agents" in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject--exer cised by whom? once more by an "agent. " The concept "Cause and Effect" is a dangerous one,
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
so long as people believe in something that causes, '
and something (a) Necessity
interpretation.
that caused.
not an established fact, but an
(b) When
nothing that acts, but only thing of fancy,
understood that the "subject"
there much that follows.
Only with the subject as model we invented
thingness and read into the pell-mell of sensa tions. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting. things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces.
In this case the world of acting atoms also dis
59
? ? for this world always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary. ,
Ultimately, of course, " the thing-in-itself" also
appears:
for'at bottom the conception of "subject-in-itself. " But we have seen that the subject an imaginary thing. The antithesis
"thing-in-itself" and "appearance" untenable; but in this way the concept " appearance " also disappears.
(c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what called subject, nor in what called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable--they are
. disappears:
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60 THE WILL TO POWER.
distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo
with which they happen (repose--movement, fixed --loose: all'antitheses which do not exist in them selves and by means of which difi'erences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts--and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things).
" (d) If we abandon the ideas "subject" and object "; then we must also abandon the idea
"substance"--and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: "matter," "spirit," and other hypothetical things, "eternity and the immuta bility of matter," etc. We are then rid of materi ality.
? ? From moral standpoint the world
But inasmuch as morality itself part of this world, morality also false. The will to truth
process of establishing things; process of making things true and lasting, total elimination of that false character, transvaluation of into being-:2" Thus," truth " not something which present and which has to be found and discovered
something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or, better still, to the n
Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose to introduce truth frocessus in infinitum, an active determining--it not process of be
false.
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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 61
coming conscious of something, which in itself fixed and determined. It merely a word for " The Will to Power. "
Life based on the hypothesis of belief in stable and regularly recurring things the mightier
the more vast must be the world of know ledge and the world called being. Logicising, rationalising, and systematising are of assistance as means of existence.
Man projects his instinct of truth, his "aim," to certain extent beyond himself, in the form of
metaphysical world of Being, "thing-in-itself," world already to hand. His requirements as creator make him invent the world in which he
works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipa tion (this faith in truth) his mainstay.
All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as contest.
As soon as we fancy that some one responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God,
WV
-v
? and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us.
The " welfare of the individual " just as fanci ful as the "welfare of the species": the first not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species
Nature), a,
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62 THE err. TO POWER.
is just as fluid as the individual. " The preserva tion of the species " is only a result of the growth of the species--that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind.
*
Theses :--The apparent conformity of means to end ("the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man ") is merely the result of that " Will to Power " which manifests itself in all phenomena :--T0 become stronger involves a pro cess of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end :--The ends which are apparent are not intended; but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organisation which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends.
Against apparent " necessity " :--
This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else.
Against the apparent " conformity of means to ends " :--
The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
(2) THE THING-IN-ITSELF AND APPEARANCE.
553
The foul blemish on Kant's criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant
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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
had no right to his distinction "appearance" and " thing-in-itself"---in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appear ance from the appearance itself, as unallowable-- in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity: and this conception, on the other' hand, already anticipates that diferentiation, as the " thing-in itself were not only inferred but actually given.
554
obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this follows that the concept " cause and effect " not applicable in philosophy which believes in things in-themselves and in appearances. Kant's mis take-- . As a matter of fact, from psycho " logical standpoint, the concept " cause and effect
derived from an attitude of mind which believes
sees the action of will upon will everywhere,-- which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechani cal view of the world (which logic and its appli cation to space and time) that concept reduced to the mathematical formula with which-and this fact which cannot be sufficiently em phasised--nothing ever understood, but rather
defined--deformed.
63
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64
THE WILL T0 rowan.
? 555
The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even
supposing there were an "in-itself," an uncon ditional thing, it could on that very account not be known! Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of "coming into relation with something "; the knowledge seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothingto anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction,--in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then? ); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means:
" to place one's self in relation with something," to feel one's self conditioned by something and one's self conditioning it--under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects "in-them selves
555
A " thing-in-itself " just as absurd as " sense in-itself," " meaning-in-itself. " There no such
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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
thing as a "fact-in-itself," for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact.
The answer to the question, "What is that? " is a process of fixing a meaning from a different standpoint. The "essence," the "essential factor," is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective, and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the question is " What is that for me? " (for us, for everything that lives, etc. etc. ).
A thing would be defined when all creatures had ' asked and answered this question, " What is that P "
concerning it. Supposing that one single creature, - with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all things, were lacking, that thing would still
remain undefined.
In short: the essence of a thing is really only
An opinion concerning that "thing. " Or, better still; " it is worth" is actually what is meant by " it is," or by "that is. "
One may not ask : " Who interprets, then? " for the act of interpreting itself, as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as " Being," but as a process, as Becoming) as a passion.
The origin of "things" is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking, willing, and feeling subject. The concept " thing " as well as all its attributes. -- Even " the subject" is a creation of this order, a " thing " like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the power that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined or distinct from all other individual capacities: at
VOL. 11. E
65
? ? ? ? ? 66 THE WILL T0 POWER.
bottom action conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to come (action and the probability of similar action).
557
The qualities of a thing are its effects upon other " things. "
If one imagines other " things " to be non existent, a thing has no qualities.
That is to say: there is nothing without other things.
That is to say: there is no " thing-in-itself. "
553
The thing-in-itself is nonsense. If I think all the "relations," all the "qualities," all the " activi ties " of a thing, away, the thing itself does not remain: for " thingness " was only inventedfanci
fully by us to meet certain logical needs--that is to say, for the purposes of definition and compre hension (in order to correlate that multitude of relations, qualities, and activities).
\
"Things which have a nature in themselves " --a dogmatic idea, which must be absolutely abandoned.
560.
That things should have a nature in themselves, quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a perfectly idle hypothesis: it would presuppose
? 559
? ? ? i to and
her )Il 2er
that interpretation and the act of being subjective are not essential, that a thing divorced from all its relations can still be a thing.
Or, the other way round: the apparent objective character of things; might it not be merely the result of a diference of degree within the subject perceiving P--could not that which changes slowly strike us as being " objective," lasting, Being, " in itself"? --could not the objective view be only a false way of conceiving things and a contrast within the perceiving subject?
56 I.
If all unity "were only unity as organisation. But the " thing in which we believe was invented only as a substratum to the various attributes. If the thing "acts," it means: we regard all the other qualities which are to hand, and which are momentarily latent, as the cause accounting for the fact that one individual quality steps forward--that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities--x-- as the cause of the quality x; which is obviously quite absurd and imbecile!
All unity is only so in the form of organisation and collective action: in the same way as a human community is a unity--that is to say, the reverse of atomic anarch ; thus it is a body politic, which stands for one, yet is not one.
562.
" At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
67
? ? ? ? 68 THE WILL TO POWER.
the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing. " The " thing in-itself" remained over. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based
that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also--substance. " The thing affects a subject ? " Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside our selves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all!
Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation.
In movement no new meaning is given to feel ing. That which cannot be the substance of movement: therefore fOrm of Being.
MR--The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede (purposes);
Secondly, through mental images of pheno mena which follow behind (the mathe matico-physical explanation).
The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which the symbolisation of the world by means Of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without
feeling or purpose--right up to the highest man. And teleology only history of purposes, and never physical.
upon
? ?
THE WILL TO POWER.
o
" However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth. " But what is truth? Perhaps it-is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for in stance, in regard to causality.
533
Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth (" omne illud verum est, quad clare et distincte percwitur. "--Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible.
But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum verz'. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred, valued, and marked as true ? ---The intellect sets its freest and strongest facultyl and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true. . .
" True "--from the standpoint of sentiment-'45 that which most provokes senti
ment ("I");
from the standpoint of thought--is
that which gives thought the
greatest sensation of strength; from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing--is that which' calls
forth the greatest resistance.
? '
? ? ? THE WILL T0 POWER m scnzncs.
Thus the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its " reality. " The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there something which being resisted.
534
The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535
According to my way of thinking, " truth " does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas
"other errors might not tyrannise over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other " tyrants," could even be laid aside and " refuted. "
Why should an irrefutable assumption neces
sarily be "true "? This question may exasperate
the logicians who limit things according to the
limitations they find in themselves: but have
long since declared war with this logician's
Everything simple simply imaginary, but not
" true. " neither
v0L. it.
That which real and true however,
unity nor reducible to unity.
D
'
49
? optimism. "
536
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it is
a
is,
is is
I
. v-dMW'_
'
is
is
? 50
THE WILL TO POWER.
537
What is truth ? ---Inertia ; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intel lectual strength, etc.
538.
First proposition. The easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way ;-- dogmatically: simplex sigillum 11eri. ---Dico: to sup pose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute
I
childishness. .
Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of
things, and of all those constant entities, is a hun dred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . . .
? Third proposition.
method of facilitating
sion,--not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .
Logic was intended to be a thought: a means of expres
539
Parmenides said: "One can form no concept of the non-existent" ;---we are at the other extreme, and say, "That of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional. "
540
There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes--therefore there must be many kinds of " truths," and consequently there can be no truth.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
51
541
Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum.
"That which necessarily true in thought must necessarily true in morality. "-- HERBERT
be SPENCER.
? . _ . _
A
" The ultimate test of the truth of proposition the inconceivableness of its negation. "---H ERBERT
SPENCER.
542
If the character of existence were false,--and this would be possible,--what would truth then be, all our truth? . An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? . .
543
In world which was essentially false, truthful ness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to higher degree of falsity. For world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created being understood that he must believe himself to be " truthful
Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to him self, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such man conceives world of Being as " God" in His own image.
In order that truthfulness may be possible, the
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a ").
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THE WILL TO POWER.
whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable : the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one--Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
s44
"Dissimulation" increases in accordance with the rising order'of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. --There power opposes power quite roughly
---ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Caesar and Napoleon (see Stendhal's remark con cerning him),' as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus) ; the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man. . . . The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal. . . . The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts : the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first
? of thought itself. Before "thought" is possible, "fancy" must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is. more primeval than the cognition of identity.
* The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: "Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est
que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et a plus fort
principle
raison quand il e? crit. "
-
? ? ? appearances
cannot be "causes"!
546
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
53
AGAINST CAUSALITY.
545
I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. "Changes" are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us) ; if we set recurrence, however regular, between
them, nothing is proved- beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc, is easily explained as the result ofa misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But
(h)
? The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentia tion, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is " altered. "
s47
Psychological history of the concept "subject. " The body, the thing, the " whole," which is visual ised by the eye, awakens the thought of distin
between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the " subject " over.
guishing
? ? ? 54
THE WILL TO POWER.
548 ,
Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independentbeing, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that " it flashes. " Or even the little word "I. " A sort of double-sight in seeing
which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the " subject " of the " ego. "
549
" Subject," " object," " attribute "--these distinc tions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who " has " something, who "has" a quality.
550
In every judgment lies the whole faith in sub ject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of
activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent) ; and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most funda mental belief: there are such things as subjects,
everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort.
I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind and, above all, look for one
who has an intention, for subject, an agent:
? ? ? a
I
it,
? Question:
Is the design the cause of pheno menon Or that also illusion? Is not the phenomenon itself?
551
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
every phenomenon an action,--formerly inten tions were seen behind all phenomena, this our oldest habit. Has the. animal also this habit? I As living organism, not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question
" why " always question concerning the causafinalis, and the general " purpose " of things. We have no sign of the "sense of the 6ffiCl? Ilt cause in this respect Hume quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in
causality, not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes; but our inahility to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of de sign. It the belief in living and thinking things,
as the only agents of causation; the belief in will, in design--the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; the belief in the "subject. " Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an
arrant absurdity?
? criticism of the concept "cause. '-'--We have absolutely no experience concerning cause; viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are
causes--that to say, that the arm moves. . . But
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is is is a is
it
it is
is
? 56
THE WILL TO POWER.
that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme--we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done ? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that,
as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as "Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we pro
jected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon, it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in
our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept " cause " we have em braced our feeling of will, our feeling of " freedom,"
our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efliciens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. - '
We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us. . . . On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will "act. " The thing, the subject the will, the design--all
inherent in the conception "cause. " We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the "atom" is one of these
fanciful inventions like the "thing" and the
? " primitive subject. " . . .
'
? ? ? THE WILL 'ro POWER IN SCIENCE.
57
At last we understand that things--consequently also atoms--effect nothing: because they are non existent; and that the concept causality quite useless. Out of necessary sequence of states, the latter's causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active
principle from to 2, to to 4, to 5). There
no such thing as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to
rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If imagine muscle separated from its "effects,"
have denied it.
In short: a phenomenon neither effected nor
capable of mf'ecting. Causa a faculty to effect
something, superadded fancifully to what hap
pens.
The interpretation of causality is an illusion.
A "thing" the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of concept, an image. As matter of fact, science has robbed the concept caus ality of all meaning, and has reserved merely as an allegorical formula, which has made matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant.
The calmlability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that rule observed, or that neces sity obeyed, or that we have projected law of causality into every phenomenon: lies in the recurrence of " identical cases. "
There no such thing as sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast,
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. . .
a
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it
it it a
,
a
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is
a
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a
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is
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a
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a Iis
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3,
58
THE WILL TO POWER.
we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon. . . . As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known--It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar.
552
To combat determinism and teleology--From
the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has " no free will. " " Mechanical necessity " is not an established fact: it was we who first read it into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising pheno mena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. - Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the ex istence of subjects "agents" in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject--exer cised by whom? once more by an "agent. " The concept "Cause and Effect" is a dangerous one,
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
so long as people believe in something that causes, '
and something (a) Necessity
interpretation.
that caused.
not an established fact, but an
(b) When
nothing that acts, but only thing of fancy,
understood that the "subject"
there much that follows.
Only with the subject as model we invented
thingness and read into the pell-mell of sensa tions. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting. things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces.
In this case the world of acting atoms also dis
59
? ? for this world always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary. ,
Ultimately, of course, " the thing-in-itself" also
appears:
for'at bottom the conception of "subject-in-itself. " But we have seen that the subject an imaginary thing. The antithesis
"thing-in-itself" and "appearance" untenable; but in this way the concept " appearance " also disappears.
(c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what called subject, nor in what called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable--they are
. disappears:
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is
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. v. "a" r
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it
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60 THE WILL TO POWER.
distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo
with which they happen (repose--movement, fixed --loose: all'antitheses which do not exist in them selves and by means of which difi'erences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts--and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things).
" (d) If we abandon the ideas "subject" and object "; then we must also abandon the idea
"substance"--and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: "matter," "spirit," and other hypothetical things, "eternity and the immuta bility of matter," etc. We are then rid of materi ality.
? ? From moral standpoint the world
But inasmuch as morality itself part of this world, morality also false. The will to truth
process of establishing things; process of making things true and lasting, total elimination of that false character, transvaluation of into being-:2" Thus," truth " not something which present and which has to be found and discovered
something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or, better still, to the n
Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose to introduce truth frocessus in infinitum, an active determining--it not process of be
false.
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free )int
ere vic nd be
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 61
coming conscious of something, which in itself fixed and determined. It merely a word for " The Will to Power. "
Life based on the hypothesis of belief in stable and regularly recurring things the mightier
the more vast must be the world of know ledge and the world called being. Logicising, rationalising, and systematising are of assistance as means of existence.
Man projects his instinct of truth, his "aim," to certain extent beyond himself, in the form of
metaphysical world of Being, "thing-in-itself," world already to hand. His requirements as creator make him invent the world in which he
works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipa tion (this faith in truth) his mainstay.
All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as contest.
As soon as we fancy that some one responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God,
WV
-v
? and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us.
The " welfare of the individual " just as fanci ful as the "welfare of the species": the first not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species
Nature), a,
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_.
* *. *is
a
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is ; is
aa
it is,
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a
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62 THE err. TO POWER.
is just as fluid as the individual. " The preserva tion of the species " is only a result of the growth of the species--that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind.
*
Theses :--The apparent conformity of means to end ("the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man ") is merely the result of that " Will to Power " which manifests itself in all phenomena :--T0 become stronger involves a pro cess of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end :--The ends which are apparent are not intended; but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organisation which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends.
Against apparent " necessity " :--
This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else.
Against the apparent " conformity of means to ends " :--
The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
(2) THE THING-IN-ITSELF AND APPEARANCE.
553
The foul blemish on Kant's criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant
? ? ? ? servo rowth
reef
IS to 1 far t of I all
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
had no right to his distinction "appearance" and " thing-in-itself"---in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appear ance from the appearance itself, as unallowable-- in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity: and this conception, on the other' hand, already anticipates that diferentiation, as the " thing-in itself were not only inferred but actually given.
554
obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this follows that the concept " cause and effect " not applicable in philosophy which believes in things in-themselves and in appearances. Kant's mis take-- . As a matter of fact, from psycho " logical standpoint, the concept " cause and effect
derived from an attitude of mind which believes
sees the action of will upon will everywhere,-- which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechani cal view of the world (which logic and its appli cation to space and time) that concept reduced to the mathematical formula with which-and this fact which cannot be sufficiently em phasised--nothing ever understood, but rather
defined--deformed.
63
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it is
.
a
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is
it
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if
64
THE WILL T0 rowan.
? 555
The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even
supposing there were an "in-itself," an uncon ditional thing, it could on that very account not be known! Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of "coming into relation with something "; the knowledge seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothingto anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction,--in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then? ); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means:
" to place one's self in relation with something," to feel one's self conditioned by something and one's self conditioning it--under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects "in-them selves
555
A " thing-in-itself " just as absurd as " sense in-itself," " meaning-in-itself. " There no such
? ? ? "). a
is a
is
g to how old, vcn an not be i ! lg
. 0
w n,
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
thing as a "fact-in-itself," for a meaning must always be given to it before it can become a fact.
The answer to the question, "What is that? " is a process of fixing a meaning from a different standpoint. The "essence," the "essential factor," is something which is only seen as a whole in perspective, and which presupposes a basis which is multifarious. Fundamentally the question is " What is that for me? " (for us, for everything that lives, etc. etc. ).
A thing would be defined when all creatures had ' asked and answered this question, " What is that P "
concerning it. Supposing that one single creature, - with its own relations and standpoint in regard to all things, were lacking, that thing would still
remain undefined.
In short: the essence of a thing is really only
An opinion concerning that "thing. " Or, better still; " it is worth" is actually what is meant by " it is," or by "that is. "
One may not ask : " Who interprets, then? " for the act of interpreting itself, as a form of the Will to Power, manifests itself (not as " Being," but as a process, as Becoming) as a passion.
The origin of "things" is wholly the work of the idealising, thinking, willing, and feeling subject. The concept " thing " as well as all its attributes. -- Even " the subject" is a creation of this order, a " thing " like all others: a simplification, aiming at a definition of the power that fixes, invents, and thinks, as such, as distinct from all isolated fixing, inventing, and thinking. Thus a capacity defined or distinct from all other individual capacities: at
VOL. 11. E
65
? ? ? ? ? 66 THE WILL T0 POWER.
bottom action conceived collectively in regard to all the action which has yet to come (action and the probability of similar action).
557
The qualities of a thing are its effects upon other " things. "
If one imagines other " things " to be non existent, a thing has no qualities.
That is to say: there is nothing without other things.
That is to say: there is no " thing-in-itself. "
553
The thing-in-itself is nonsense. If I think all the "relations," all the "qualities," all the " activi ties " of a thing, away, the thing itself does not remain: for " thingness " was only inventedfanci
fully by us to meet certain logical needs--that is to say, for the purposes of definition and compre hension (in order to correlate that multitude of relations, qualities, and activities).
\
"Things which have a nature in themselves " --a dogmatic idea, which must be absolutely abandoned.
560.
That things should have a nature in themselves, quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity, is a perfectly idle hypothesis: it would presuppose
? 559
? ? ? i to and
her )Il 2er
that interpretation and the act of being subjective are not essential, that a thing divorced from all its relations can still be a thing.
Or, the other way round: the apparent objective character of things; might it not be merely the result of a diference of degree within the subject perceiving P--could not that which changes slowly strike us as being " objective," lasting, Being, " in itself"? --could not the objective view be only a false way of conceiving things and a contrast within the perceiving subject?
56 I.
If all unity "were only unity as organisation. But the " thing in which we believe was invented only as a substratum to the various attributes. If the thing "acts," it means: we regard all the other qualities which are to hand, and which are momentarily latent, as the cause accounting for the fact that one individual quality steps forward--that is to say, we take the sum of its qualities--x-- as the cause of the quality x; which is obviously quite absurd and imbecile!
All unity is only so in the form of organisation and collective action: in the same way as a human community is a unity--that is to say, the reverse of atomic anarch ; thus it is a body politic, which stands for one, yet is not one.
562.
" At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
67
? ? ? ? 68 THE WILL TO POWER.
the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing. " The " thing in-itself" remained over. The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based
that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also--substance. " The thing affects a subject ? " Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside our selves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all!
Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation.
In movement no new meaning is given to feel ing. That which cannot be the substance of movement: therefore fOrm of Being.
MR--The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede (purposes);
Secondly, through mental images of pheno mena which follow behind (the mathe matico-physical explanation).
The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which the symbolisation of the world by means Of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without
feeling or purpose--right up to the highest man. And teleology only history of purposes, and never physical.
upon
? ?
