No More Learning

(Kant concludes (1) that there are some pro positions which hold good only on one condition ;
44
this condition is that they do not spring from experience, but. from pure reason. )
Thus, the question whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such proposi tions? No, whence does our belief get its cause? But the origin of a belief, of strong conviction,
a psychological problem: and very limited and narrow experience frequently brings about such belief! It already presupposes that there are not only " data a posteriori " but also " data a priori "-- that to say, "previous to experience. " Neces
sary and universal truth cannot be given by experi ence: therefore quite clear that has come to us without experience at all?
There no such thing as an isolated judgment!
An isolated judgment never " true," never knowledge; only in connection with, and when
related to, many other judgments, of its truth forthcoming.
(2)
? What the difference between true and false belief? What knowledge? _He "knows " that heavenly!
Necessary and universal truth cannot be given
guarantee
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? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
45
by experience! It therefore independent of ex perience, of all experience The view which comes quite a priori, and therefore independent of all ex perience, merely outof reason, " pure knowledge "
" The principles of logic, the principle of identity and of contradiction, are examples of pure know ledge, because they precede all experience. "--But these principles are not cognitions, but regulatioe
articles of faith.
In order to establish the a priori character
(the pure rationality) of mathematical axioms, space
must be conceived as form ofpure reason.
Hume had declared that there were no apriori
synthetic judgments. Kant says there are--the mathematical ones! And there are such judg ments, there may also be such things as metaphysics and knowledge of things by means of pure reason
Mathematics possible under conditions which are not allowed to metaphysics. All human know ledge either experience or mathematics.
A judgment synthetic--that to say, co ordinates various ideas. It a priori--that to say, this co-ordination universally true and necessary, and arrived at, not by sensual experi ence, but by pure reason.
If there are such things as a priori judgments, then reason must be able to co-ordinate: co-ordination form. Reason must possess a formative faculty.
531.
judging our oldest faith; our habit of believing this to be true or false, of asserting or
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THE WILL TO POWER.
denying, our certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, our belief that we really " know "-- what is believed to be true in all judgments?
What are attributes P--We did not regard changes in ourselves merely as such, but as " things in themselves," which are strange to us, and which we only "perceive"; and we did not class them as phenomena, but as Being, as " attributes " ; and in addition we invented a creature to which they attach themselves--that is to say, we made the ej'ect the working cause, and the latter we made Being. But
even in this plain statement, the concept " effect " is arbitrary: for in regard to those changes which occur in us, and of which we are convinced we ourselves are not the cause, we still argue that they must be effects: and this is in accordance with the belief that " every change must have its author " ;---but this belief in itself is already mythology; for it separates the working cause from the cause in work. When I say the " lightning flashes," I set the flash down, once as an action and a second time as a subject acting; and thus a
thing is fancifully affixed to a phenomenon, which is not one with but which stable, which and does not "cbme. "--To make the phenomenon the working cause, and to make the efect into a thing
----into Being: this the double error, or interpreta tion, of which we are guilty.
532.
The judgment--that the faith: "This and this so. " In every judgment, therefore, there lies
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the admission that an " identical case " has been met with: it thus takes some sort of comparison for granted, with the help of the memory. judg ment does not create the idea that an identical case seems to be there. It believes rather that it actu ally perceives such a case; it works on the hypothesis that there are such things as identical cases. But what is that much older function called, which must have been active much earlier, and which in itself equalises unequal cases and makes them alike? What is that second function called, which with this first one as a basis, etc. etc. " That which provokes the same sensations as another thing is equal to that other thing ": but what is that called which makes sensations equal, which regards them as equal P--There could be no judg ments if a sort of equalising process were not active
,within all sensations: memory is only possible by means of the underscoring of all that has already been experienced and learned. Before a judgment can be formed, the process of assimilation must already'have been completed: thus, even here, an intellectual activity is to be observed which does not enter consciousness in at all the same way as the pain which accompanies a wound. Probably the psychic phenomena correspond to all the organic functions--that is to say, they consist of assimila
tion, rejection, growth, etc.
The essential thing is to start out frhm the body
and to use it as the general clue. It is by far the richer phenomenon, and allows of much more accur ate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit.
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
47
? ? ? 48
THE WILL TO POWER.
o
" However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth. " But what is truth? Perhaps it-is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for in stance, in regard to causality.
533
Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth (" omne illud verum est, quad clare et distincte percwitur. "--Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible.
But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum verz'. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred, valued, and marked as true ? ---The intellect sets its freest and strongest facultyl and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true. . .
" True "--from the standpoint of sentiment-'45 that which most provokes senti
ment ("I");
from the standpoint of thought--is
that which gives thought the
greatest sensation of strength; from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing--is that which' calls
forth the greatest resistance.
? '
? ? ? THE WILL T0 POWER m scnzncs.
Thus the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its " reality. " The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there something which being resisted.
534
The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535
According to my way of thinking, " truth " does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas
"other errors might not tyrannise over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other " tyrants," could even be laid aside and " refuted. "
Why should an irrefutable assumption neces
sarily be "true "? This question may exasperate
the logicians who limit things according to the
limitations they find in themselves: but have
long since declared war with this logician's
Everything simple simply imaginary, but not
" true. " neither
v0L. it.
That which real and true however,
unity nor reducible to unity.
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THE WILL TO POWER.
537
What is truth ? ---Inertia ; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intel lectual strength, etc.
538.
First proposition. The easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way ;-- dogmatically: simplex sigillum 11eri. ---Dico: to sup pose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute
I
childishness. .
Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of
things, and of all those constant entities, is a hun dred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . . .
? Third proposition.
method of facilitating
sion,--not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .
Logic was intended to be a thought: a means of expres
539
Parmenides said: "One can form no concept of the non-existent" ;---we are at the other extreme, and say, "That of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional. "
540
There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes--therefore there must be many kinds of " truths," and consequently there can be no truth.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
51
541
Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum.
"That which necessarily true in thought must necessarily true in morality. "-- HERBERT
be SPENCER.
? . _ . _
A
" The ultimate test of the truth of proposition the inconceivableness of its negation. "---H ERBERT
SPENCER.
542
If the character of existence were false,--and this would be possible,--what would truth then be, all our truth? . An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? . .
543
In world which was essentially false, truthful ness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to higher degree of falsity. For world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created being understood that he must believe himself to be " truthful
Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to him self, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such man conceives world of Being as " God" in His own image.
In order that truthfulness may be possible, the
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whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable : the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one--Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
s44
"Dissimulation" increases in accordance with the rising order'of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. --There power opposes power quite roughly
---ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Caesar and Napoleon (see Stendhal's remark con cerning him),' as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus) ; the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man. . . . The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal. . . . The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts : the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first
? of thought itself. Before "thought" is possible, "fancy" must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is. more primeval than the cognition of identity.
* The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: "Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c'est
que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et a plus fort
principle
raison quand il e? crit. "
-
? ? ? appearances
cannot be "causes"!
546
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
53
AGAINST CAUSALITY.
545
I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. "Changes" are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us) ; if we set recurrence, however regular, between
them, nothing is proved- beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc, is easily explained as the result ofa misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But
(h)
? The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentia tion, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is " altered. "
s47
Psychological history of the concept "subject.
" The body, the thing, the " whole," which is visual ised by the eye, awakens the thought of distin
between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the " subject " over.
guishing
? ? ? 54
THE WILL TO POWER.
548 ,
Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independentbeing, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that " it flashes. " Or even the little word "I. " A sort of double-sight in seeing
which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the " subject " of the " ego. "
549
" Subject," " object," " attribute "--these distinc tions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who " has " something, who "has" a quality.
550
In every judgment lies the whole faith in sub ject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of
activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent) ; and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most funda mental belief: there are such things as subjects,
everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort.
I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind and, above all, look for one
who has an intention, for subject, an agent:
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Is the design the cause of pheno menon Or that also illusion? Is not the phenomenon itself?
551
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
every phenomenon an action,--formerly inten tions were seen behind all phenomena, this our oldest habit. Has the. animal also this habit? I As living organism, not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question
" why " always question concerning the causafinalis, and the general " purpose " of things. We have no sign of the "sense of the 6ffiCl? Ilt cause in this respect Hume quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in
causality, not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes; but our inahility to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of de sign. It the belief in living and thinking things,
as the only agents of causation; the belief in will, in design--the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; the belief in the "subject. " Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an
arrant absurdity?
? criticism of the concept "cause. '-'--We have absolutely no experience concerning cause; viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are
causes--that to say, that the arm moves. . . But
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that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme--we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done ? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that,
as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as "Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we pro
jected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon, it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in
our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept " cause " we have em braced our feeling of will, our feeling of " freedom,"
our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efliciens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. - '
We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us. . . . On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will "act. " The thing, the subject the will, the design--all
inherent in the conception "cause. " We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the "atom" is one of these
fanciful inventions like the "thing" and the
? " primitive subject. " . . .
'
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57
At last we understand that things--consequently also atoms--effect nothing: because they are non existent; and that the concept causality quite useless. Out of necessary sequence of states, the latter's causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active
principle from to 2, to to 4, to 5). There
no such thing as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to
rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If imagine muscle separated from its "effects,"
have denied it.
In short: a phenomenon neither effected nor
capable of mf'ecting. Causa a faculty to effect
something, superadded fancifully to what hap
pens.
The interpretation of causality is an illusion.
A "thing" the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of concept, an image. As matter of fact, science has robbed the concept caus ality of all meaning, and has reserved merely as an allegorical formula, which has made matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant.
The calmlability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that rule observed, or that neces sity obeyed, or that we have projected law of causality into every phenomenon: lies in the recurrence of " identical cases. "
There no such thing as sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast,
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THE WILL TO POWER.
we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon. . . . As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known--It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar.
552
To combat determinism and teleology--From
the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has " no free will. " " Mechanical necessity " is not an established fact: it was we who first read it into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising pheno mena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. - Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the ex istence of subjects "agents" in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject--exer cised by whom? once more by an "agent. " The concept "Cause and Effect" is a dangerous one,
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
so long as people believe in something that causes, '
and something (a) Necessity
interpretation.
that caused.
not an established fact, but an
(b) When
nothing that acts, but only thing of fancy,
understood that the "subject"
there much that follows.
Only with the subject as model we invented
thingness and read into the pell-mell of sensa tions. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting. things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces.
In this case the world of acting atoms also dis
59
? ? for this world always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary. ,
Ultimately, of course, " the thing-in-itself" also
appears:
for'at bottom the conception of "subject-in-itself. " But we have seen that the subject an imaginary thing. The antithesis
"thing-in-itself" and "appearance" untenable; but in this way the concept " appearance " also disappears.
(c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what called subject, nor in what called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable--they are
. disappears:
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60 THE WILL TO POWER.
distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo
with which they happen (repose--movement, fixed --loose: all'antitheses which do not exist in them selves and by means of which difi'erences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as antitheses; it is from logic that we derive our concept of contrasts--and starting out from its standpoint we spread the error over all things).
" (d) If we abandon the ideas "subject" and object "; then we must also abandon the idea
"substance"--and therefore its various modifications too; for instance: "matter," "spirit," and other hypothetical things, "eternity and the immuta bility of matter," etc. We are then rid of materi ality.
? ? From moral standpoint the world
But inasmuch as morality itself part of this world, morality also false. The will to truth
process of establishing things; process of making things true and lasting, total elimination of that false character, transvaluation of into being-:2" Thus," truth " not something which present and which has to be found and discovered
something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or, better still, to the n
Will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose to introduce truth frocessus in infinitum, an active determining--it not process of be
false.
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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 61
coming conscious of something, which in itself fixed and determined. It merely a word for " The Will to Power. "
Life based on the hypothesis of belief in stable and regularly recurring things the mightier
the more vast must be the world of know ledge and the world called being. Logicising, rationalising, and systematising are of assistance as means of existence.
Man projects his instinct of truth, his "aim," to certain extent beyond himself, in the form of
metaphysical world of Being, "thing-in-itself," world already to hand. His requirements as creator make him invent the world in which he
works in advance; he anticipates it: this anticipa tion (this faith in truth) his mainstay.
All phenomena, movement, Becoming, regarded as the establishment of relations of degree and of force, as contest.
As soon as we fancy that some one responsible for the fact that we are thus and thus, etc. (God,
WV
-v
? and that we ascribe our existence, our happiness, our misery, our destiny, to that some one, we corrupt the innocence of Becoming for ourselves. We then have some one who wishes to attain to something by means of us and with us.
The " welfare of the individual " just as fanci ful as the "welfare of the species": the first not sacrificed to the last; seen from afar, the species
Nature), a,
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62 THE err. TO POWER.
is just as fluid as the individual. " The preserva tion of the species " is only a result of the growth of the species--that is to say, of the overcoming of the species on the road to a stronger kind.
*
Theses :--The apparent conformity of means to end ("the conformity of means to end which far surpasses the art of man ") is merely the result of that " Will to Power " which manifests itself in all phenomena :--T0 become stronger involves a pro cess of ordering, which may well be mistaken for an attempted conformity of means to end :--The ends which are apparent are not intended; but, as soon as a superior power prevails over an inferior power, and the latter proceeds to work as a function of the former, an order of rank is established, an organisation which must give rise to the idea that there is an arrangement of means and ends.
Against apparent " necessity " :--
This is only an expression for the fact that a certain power is not also something else.
Against the apparent " conformity of means to ends " :--
The latter is only an expression for the order among the spheres of power and their interplay.
(2) THE THING-IN-ITSELF AND APPEARANCE.
553
The foul blemish on Kant's criticism has at last become visible even to the coarsest eyes: Kant
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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
had no right to his distinction "appearance" and " thing-in-itself"---in his own writings he had deprived himself of the right of differentiating any longer in this old and hackneyed manner, seeing that he had condemned the practice of drawing any conclusions concerning the cause of an appear ance from the appearance itself, as unallowable-- in accordance with his conception of the idea of causality and its purely intraphenomenal validity: and this conception, on the other' hand, already anticipates that diferentiation, as the " thing-in itself were not only inferred but actually given.
554
obvious that neither things-in-themselves nor appearances can be related to each other in the form of cause and effect: and from this follows that the concept " cause and effect " not applicable in philosophy which believes in things in-themselves and in appearances. Kant's mis take-- . As a matter of fact, from psycho " logical standpoint, the concept " cause and effect
derived from an attitude of mind which believes
sees the action of will upon will everywhere,-- which believes only in living things, and at bottom only in souls (not in things). Within the mechani cal view of the world (which logic and its appli cation to space and time) that concept reduced to the mathematical formula with which-and this fact which cannot be sufficiently em phasised--nothing ever understood, but rather
defined--deformed.
63
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THE WILL T0 rowan.
? 555
The greatest of all fables is the one relating to knowledge. People would like to know how things-in-themselves are constituted: but behold, there are no things-in-themselves! But even
supposing there were an "in-itself," an uncon ditional thing, it could on that very account not be known! Something unconditioned cannot be known: otherwise it would not be unconditioned! Knowing, however, is always a process of "coming into relation with something "; the knowledge seeker, on this principle, wants the thing, which he would know, to be nothing to him, and to be nothingto anybody at all: and from this there results a contradiction,--in the first place, between this will to know, and this desire that the thing to be known should be nothing to him (wherefore know at all then? ); and secondly, because something which is nothing to anybody, does not even exist, and therefore cannot be known. Knowing means:
" to place one's self in relation with something," to feel one's self conditioned by something and one's self conditioning it--under all circumstances, then, it is a process of making stable or fixed, of defining, of making conditions conscious (not a process of sounding things, creatures, or objects "in-them selves
555
A " thing-in-itself " just as absurd as " sense in-itself," " meaning-in-itself. " There no such
? ?