No More Learning

In Part II. Nietzsche reveals himself as utterly opposed to all mechanistic and materialistic inter pretations of the Universe. He exalts the spirit and repudiates the idea that mere pressure from without--naked environment--is to be held re sponsible (and often guilty! ) for all that material istic 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,
surance] unfamiliar. "
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? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. \ xiii
will be of special interest. There 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 influ enced 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 difficult to defend Darwin from the funda
mental 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 always " struggle for existence" presupposes the constant presence of
two conditions--want and over-population,--an assumption which absolutely non-proven; and likewise lends 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, pretty plain sailing, Aphorisrn 786 contains perhaps the most important statements. Here morality shown to be merely an instrument, but this time 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, mechanistic interpretation of the
? Universe.
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xiv
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
to him, to be denied another class.
ought necessarily, according .
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 con stituted. Christianity is a case in point (see Will to Power, vol. i. Aph. I 32).
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 with all that contains which beautiful, indifferent, or ugly, from human standpoint, according to Nietzsche, the creation of our own valuing minds. Perhaps only few people have had 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 that huinan 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
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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 de preciate 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 in nocent 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 P
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 up on life without transfiguring hallowing bless ing and making appear better, bigger, and more beautiful. And, in this view, Nietzsche quite consistent; for, we must accept his con clusion that our values are determined for us by our higher men, then becomes of the highest importance that these valuers should be so con stituted that their values may be boon and not
bane to the rest of humanity.
Alasl only too often, and especially in the
nineteenth century, have men who lacked this Dionysian spirit stood up and valued the world; and against these that Nietzsche protests.
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is the bad air they have spread which he would
fain dispel.
As 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 thathis 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 erotz'cis, 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. 50 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 philo sophies and moralities have hitherto been directed
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XVII
at a mass and at mob, we find that their eleva tion must of necessity be decided by the lowest of mankind. Thus all passions are banned, be cause base men do not know how to enlist them in their service. Men who are masters of them selves and of others, men who understand the
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 man kind'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, 94 and
management
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we have plans of a constructive teaching which the remainder of Part elaborates.
And now, following Nietzsche carefully through Part II. (Dionysus), what the inevitable con clusion of all we have read? This analysis of the world's collective values and their ascription to certain " will to power " may now seem to many but an exhaustive attempt at new system of nomenclature, and little else. As matter of fact very much more than this. By means of 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 was human will that created Nietzsche wished to give man the courage of this will, and clean conscience in exercising it. For
was precisely this very will to power which had been most hated and most maligned by everybody up to Nietzsche's time.
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Long enough, prompted by the fear of attribut ing any one of his happiest thoughts to this hated fundamental will, had man ascribed all his valua tions and all his most sublime inspirations to something outside himself,--whether this some thing 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 com ing 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, Thas 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 meta physics of former beliefs, he applied the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence to this end. Seeing, how
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xix
ever, 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 state ment that the world will recur eternally in small things as in great, is still a somewhat daring con jecture--a conjecture, however, which would have been entirely warrantable if its disciplinary value had been commensurate with its daring.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
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THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
von. 11.
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I.
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION.
466.
(11)
? 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
by Auguste Comte almost as philosophy itself.
- 468.
The great Methodologrlrts: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte.
469.
The most valuable knowledge is always dis covered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods.
? ? ? 4
THE WILL TO POWER.
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 pat/10s 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 aesthetic taste: they believed in the pictu resque 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 which at last became incarnate in the
? 0f pat/10s
scientific man. . . .
Consu'entiausness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for
the scientific character, as was also, in a pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them. . . .
very
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
5 (6) THE STARTING-POINT OF EPISTEMOLOGY.
47o
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 re linquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.
471
The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such moral fashion that lzuman reason must be rag/It, a mere piece of good-natured and
? trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness--God regarded as the
Creator of all things--These concepts are our in heritance from former existence in Beyond.
472
The contradiction of the so-called " facts of consciousness. " Observation thousand times more difficult, error perhaps the absolute con dition of observation.
473
The intellect cannot criticise itself, simply be cause 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 to say, because, in order to criticise the intellect, we should have to be higher
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creatures with " absolute knowledge. " This would
the existence of something, a "thing in-itself," apart from all the perspective kinds of observation and sense-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 some thing 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!
as
Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous starting-point, as if there were such things as "facts of consciousness "--and no phenomena/ism in introspection.
47 6
presuppose
? " 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 P Our inner world is also" appearance "
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? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
7
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 aclual process of inner " perception," the relalion of causes between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and may be purely imaginary. This "inner world of
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
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 never takes place at all: 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 t/zinl's: at times, even, "the mind absolute and pure "--this concept
an evolved and second result of false intro spection, which believes in " thinking ": in the first
appearance"
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. . .
Causality evades us; to assume the existence
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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
? 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 ac customed 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
(i. e.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
9
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 p/zenonzenalz'sm of tile " 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. . . .
? ? ? ? IO THE \VILL TO POWER.
In the phenomenalism Of the " inner world," the chronological order of cause and effect is inverted. The fundamental fact of "inner experience " that the cause imagined after the effect has been recorded. . . The same holds good of the sequence of thoughts: we seek for the reason of thought, before has reached our consciousness; and then
the reason reaches consciousness first, whereupon follows its effect. . All our dreams are the in terpretation of our collective feelings with the view of discovering the possible causes of the latter; and the process such that condition only becomes conscious, when the supposed causal link has reached consciousness. * "
? . The whole of "inner experience
this: that a cause sought and imagined which accounts for certain irritation in our nerve-centres, and that only the cause which found in this way which reaches consciousness; this cause may
have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause ----it a sort of groping assisted by former "inner experiences," that to say, by memory. The memory, however, retains the habit of old inter pretations,---that 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 every instant, indissolubly bound up with the
* When in our dream we hear bell ringing, or 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.
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old error of cause: we interpret by means of the schematism of "the thing," etc.
"Inner experience " only enters consciousness when has found a language which the individual can understand--that to say, translation of certain condition into conditions with which he familiar; " understand " means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms
of something old or familiar. For instance, "I feel unwiell "--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 dis covered a reason for it. . . This what call a lack ofphilological knowledge; to be able to read a text, as such, without reading an interpretation into the latest form of " inner experience,"--
perhaps barely possible form.
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
not question of " subject and object," but of particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, re~
gularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalised). .
Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It therefore obvious that increases with each advance of power.
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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 ascheme 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 in order to enlist that amount in its service.
(0) THE BELIEF 1N THE "Eco. " SUBJECT.
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"
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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
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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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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
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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.