FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM
TRANSLATED
BY L.
Niezsche - Beyond Good and Evil
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
By Friedrich Nietzsche
Translated by Helen Zimmern
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION:
The following is a reprint of the Helen Zimmern translation from German
into English of "Beyond Good and Evil," as published in The Complete
Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1909-1913). Some adaptations from the
original text were made to format it into an e-text. Italics in the
original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign
language phrases that were italicized. Original footnotes are put in
brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. Some
spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today"
and "tomorrow. " Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original
text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as
"idealize. " "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic. "
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
CHAPTER I: PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
CHAPTER II: THE FREE SPIRIT
CHAPTER III: THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
CHAPTER IV: APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
CHAPTER V: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
CHAPTER VI: WE SCHOLARS
CHAPTER VII: OUR VIRTUES
CHAPTER VIII: PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
CHAPTER IX: WHAT IS NOBLE?
FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L. A. MAGNUS)
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground
for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been
dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid
their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and
at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at
its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping
that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive
and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once
and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such
imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time
(such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and
ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some
play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an
audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to
be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was
astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial"
pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems
that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with
everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the
earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has
been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in
Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although
it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist
error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.
But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare,
can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep,
we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to
the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the
fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked
Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of
youths, and deserved his hemlock? " But the struggle against Plato,
or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe
a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as
a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to
unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means
of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit
would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented
gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they
invented printing. ) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free
spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the
tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT. . . .
Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.
CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous
enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have
hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not
laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is
already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn
impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions
ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really
is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the
question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired
about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT
RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the
value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented
ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which
the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of
interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as
if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first
to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk
in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.
2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth
out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the
wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest
value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this
transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of
delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in
the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the
'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else! "--This
mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which
metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation
is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of
theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that
is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth. " The fundamental belief of
metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred
even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where
doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn
vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM. " For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations
and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional
perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current
among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true,
the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher
and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It
might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and
respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously
related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!
For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous
"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I
see such new philosophers beginning to appear.
3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between
their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of
conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and
it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to
learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness. " As
little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process
and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his
instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and
its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak
more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite
mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may
be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things. "
4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is
here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic
judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that
without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of
reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be
a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A
CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of
value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully
and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they
are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in
short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not
enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and
virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in
the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had
been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure,
divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics,
who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a
prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with
arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not
wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their
prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and VERY far from having the
conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be
understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence
and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic
by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical
imperative"--makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small
amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical
preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by
means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and
mask--in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," to translate the term fairly
and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart
of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible
maiden, that Pallas Athene:--how much of personal timidity and
vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!
6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up
till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and
a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover
that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted
the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a
philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first
ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at? " Accordingly,
I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of
philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made
use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge! ) as an instrument. But whoever
considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and
cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time
or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to
look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate
LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in
the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if
you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well
wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of
the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual
"interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another
direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics;
it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little
machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a
good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not
CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the
contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all,
his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE
IS,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature
stand to each other.
7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging
than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the
Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense,
and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of
Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles;
besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS,
there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular
name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that
Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the
mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of
which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three
hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who
knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god
Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of
the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an
ancient mystery:
Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.
9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what
fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly
extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration,
without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain:
imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live
in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just
endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing,
preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different?
And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means
actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do
DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves
are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you:
while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature,
you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players
and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and
ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein;
you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would
like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal
glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth,
you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such
hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically,
that you are no longer able to see it otherwise--and to crown all, some
unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that
BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is
self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is
not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting
story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today,
as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always
creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy
is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the
will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with
which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at
present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and
he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else,
cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated
cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the
forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always
prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful
possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience,
who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an
uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing,
mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a
virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side
AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in
that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and
thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession
to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than
in one's body? ),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back
something which was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live
better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by
"modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode
of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed
yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety
and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the
most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair
motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom
there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it
seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and
knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels
them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted. . . what do their retrograde
by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish
to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE
strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and
not back!
11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to
divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on
German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which
he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of
Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult
thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics. " Let us
only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a
new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting
that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid
flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and
on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still
prouder! --But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so.
"How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE? " Kant asks himself--and
what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"--but
unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly,
and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved
in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this
new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further
discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still
moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact. " Then came
the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the
Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for
"faculties. " And what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and
still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the
malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish
between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the
"transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition,
and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally
pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of
this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness,
notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile
conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral
indignation. Enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream
vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still
rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old
Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to
say. But, is that--an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely
a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of
a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in
Moliere,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time
to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI
possible? " by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments
necessary? "--in effect, it is high time that we should understand
that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the
preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might
naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and
readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all;
we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false
judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as
plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view
of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which
"German philosophy"--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas
(goosefeet)? --has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is
no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to
German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous,
the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the
political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still
overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into
this, in short--"sensus assoupire. ". . .
12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted
theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps
no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious
signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an
abbreviation of the means of expression)--thanks chiefly to the Pole
Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest
and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus
has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth
does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the
last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in
"matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest
triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One
must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war
to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a
dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more
celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give
the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which
Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be
permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the
soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad,
as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between
ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby,
and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as
happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly
touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open
for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such
conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity,"
and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want
henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW
psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have
hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of
the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert
and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a
merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds
that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows?
perhaps to DISCOVER the new.
13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the
instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic
being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength--life
itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect
and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else,
let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles! --one of which
is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's
inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must
be essentially economy of principles.
14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural
philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according
to us, if I may say so! ) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as
it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a
long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation.
It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and
palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and
CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it
follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism.
What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and
felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the
charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode,
consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps
among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our
contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining
masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional
networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the
mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT
different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise
the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers,
with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest
possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there
is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative
different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders
of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform.
15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on
the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the
idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes!
Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as
heuristic principle. What?
FROM THE HEIGHTS (POEM TRANSLATED BY L. A. MAGNUS)
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground
for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been
dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid
their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and
at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at
its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping
that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive
and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once
and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such
imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time
(such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and
ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some
play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an
audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to
be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was
astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial"
pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems
that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with
everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the
earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has
been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in
Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although
it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist
error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.
But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare,
can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep,
we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to
the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the
fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked
Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of
youths, and deserved his hemlock? " But the struggle against Plato,
or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe
a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as
a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to
unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means
of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit
would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented
gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they
invented printing. ) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free
spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the
tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT. . . .
Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.
CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous
enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have
hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not
laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is
already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn
impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions
ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really
is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the
question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired
about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT
RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the
value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented
ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which
the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of
interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as
if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first
to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk
in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.
2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth
out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the
wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest
value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this
transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of
delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in
the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the
'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else! "--This
mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which
metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation
is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of
theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that
is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth. " The fundamental belief of
metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred
even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where
doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn
vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM. " For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations
and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional
perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current
among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true,
the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher
and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It
might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and
respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously
related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!
For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous
"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I
see such new philosophers beginning to appear.
3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between
their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of
conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and
it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to
learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness. " As
little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process
and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his
instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and
its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak
more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite
mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may
be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things. "
4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is
here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic
judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that
without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of
reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be
a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A
CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of
value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully
and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they
are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in
short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not
enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and
virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in
the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had
been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure,
divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics,
who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a
prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with
arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not
wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their
prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and VERY far from having the
conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be
understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence
and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic
by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical
imperative"--makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small
amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical
preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by
means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and
mask--in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," to translate the term fairly
and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart
of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible
maiden, that Pallas Athene:--how much of personal timidity and
vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!
6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up
till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and
a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover
that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted
the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a
philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first
ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at? " Accordingly,
I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of
philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made
use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge! ) as an instrument. But whoever
considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and
cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time
or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to
look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate
LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in
the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if
you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well
wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of
the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual
"interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another
direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics;
it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little
machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a
good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not
CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the
contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all,
his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE
IS,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature
stand to each other.
7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging
than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the
Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense,
and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of
Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles;
besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS,
there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular
name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that
Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the
mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of
which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three
hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who
knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god
Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?
8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of
the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an
ancient mystery:
Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.
9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what
fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly
extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration,
without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain:
imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live
in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just
endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing,
preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different?
And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means
actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do
DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves
are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you:
while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature,
you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players
and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and
ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein;
you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would
like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal
glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth,
you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such
hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically,
that you are no longer able to see it otherwise--and to crown all, some
unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that
BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is
self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is
not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting
story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today,
as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always
creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy
is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the
will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with
which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at
present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and
he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else,
cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated
cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the
forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always
prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful
possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience,
who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an
uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing,
mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a
virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side
AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in
that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and
thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession
to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than
in one's body? ),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back
something which was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live
better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by
"modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode
of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed
yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety
and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the
most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair
motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom
there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it
seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and
knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels
them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted. . . what do their retrograde
by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish
to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE
strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and
not back!
11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to
divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on
German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which
he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of
Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult
thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics. " Let us
only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a
new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting
that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid
flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and
on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still
prouder! --But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so.
"How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE? " Kant asks himself--and
what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"--but
unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly,
and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved
in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this
new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further
discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still
moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact. " Then came
the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the
Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for
"faculties. " And what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and
still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the
malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish
between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the
"transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition,
and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally
pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of
this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness,
notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile
conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral
indignation. Enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream
vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still
rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old
Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to
say. But, is that--an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely
a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of
a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in
Moliere,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time
to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI
possible? " by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments
necessary? "--in effect, it is high time that we should understand
that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the
preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might
naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and
readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all;
we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false
judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as
plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view
of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which
"German philosophy"--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas
(goosefeet)? --has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is
no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to
German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous,
the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the
political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still
overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into
this, in short--"sensus assoupire. ". . .
12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted
theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps
no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious
signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an
abbreviation of the means of expression)--thanks chiefly to the Pole
Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest
and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus
has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth
does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the
last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in
"matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest
triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One
must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war
to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a
dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more
celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give
the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which
Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be
permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the
soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad,
as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between
ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby,
and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as
happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly
touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open
for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such
conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity,"
and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want
henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW
psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have
hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of
the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert
and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a
merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds
that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows?
perhaps to DISCOVER the new.
13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the
instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic
being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength--life
itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect
and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else,
let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles! --one of which
is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's
inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must
be essentially economy of principles.
14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural
philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according
to us, if I may say so! ) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as
it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a
long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation.
It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and
palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and
CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it
follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism.
What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and
felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the
charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode,
consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps
among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our
contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining
masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional
networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the
mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT
different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise
the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers,
with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest
possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there
is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative
different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders
of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform.
15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on
the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the
idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes!
Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as
heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world
is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external
world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves
would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a
complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something
fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work
of our organs--?
16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are
"immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition
of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold
of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any
falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the
object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate
certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself,"
involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may
think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher
must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in
the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the
argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible:
for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be
something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the
part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,'
and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by
thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided
within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether
that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'?
