No More Learning

467.
The history of scientific methods was
by Auguste Comte almost as philosophy itself.
- 468.
The great Methodologrlrts: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte.
469.
The most valuable knowledge is always dis covered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods.
? ? ? 4
THE WILL TO POWER.
All methods, all the hypotheses on which the science of our day depends, were treated with the profoundest contempt for centuries: on their account a man used to be banished from the society of respectable people--he was held to be an "enemy of God," a reviler of the highest ideal, a madman.
We had the whole pat/10s of mankind against us,---our notion of what " truth " ought to be, of what the service of truth ought to be, our objectivity, our method, our calm, cautious and distrustful manner were altogether despicable. .
At bottom, that which has kept men back most, is an aesthetic taste: they believed in the pictu resque effect of truth; what they demanded of the scientist was, that he should make a strong appeal to their imagination.
From the above, it would almost seem as if the very reverse had been achieved, as if a sudden jump had been made: as a matter of fact, the schooling which the moral hyperboles afforded, gradually prepared the way for that milder form which at last became incarnate in the
? 0f pat/10s
scientific man. . . .
Consu'entiausness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for
the scientific character, as was also, in a pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them. . . .
very
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
5 (6) THE STARTING-POINT OF EPISTEMOLOGY.
47o
Profound disinclination to halt once and for all at any collective view of the world. The charm of the opposite point of view: the refusal to re linquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.
471
The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such moral fashion that lzuman reason must be rag/It, a mere piece of good-natured and
? trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness--God regarded as the
Creator of all things--These concepts are our in heritance from former existence in Beyond.
472
The contradiction of the so-called " facts of consciousness. " Observation thousand times more difficult, error perhaps the absolute con dition of observation.
473
The intellect cannot criticise itself, simply be cause can be compared with no other kind of intellect, and also because its ability to know would only reveal itself in the presence of "actual reality that to say, because, in order to criticise the intellect, we should have to be higher
simple-minded
? ? ~\. . _. . ,_\/
~*
w. >>-_,v__-. . __---. . fi
"; is
it
a is
is
a
a
a
? 6 THE WILL TO rowan.
creatures with " absolute knowledge. " This would
the existence of something, a "thing in-itself," apart from all the perspective kinds of observation and sense-spiritual perception. But the psychological origin of the belief in things, forbids our speaking of "things in themselves. "
474
The idea that a sort of adequate relation exists between subject and object, that the object is some thing which when seen from inside would be a subject, is a well-meant invention which, I believe, has seen its best days. The measure of that which we are conscious of, is perforce entirely dependent upon the coarse utility of the function of consciousness: how could this little garret prospect of consciousness, warrant our asserting
anything in regard to " subject " and "object," which would bear any relation to reality!
as
Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous starting-point, as if there were such things as "facts of consciousness "--and no phenomena/ism in introspection.
47 6
presuppose
? " Consciousness "--to what extent is the idea which is thought of, the idea of will, or the idea of a feeling (which is known by us alone), quite
superficial P Our inner world is also" appearance "
|
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
7
477
I am convinced of the phenomenalism of the inner world also: everything that reaches our consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted, simplified, schematised, interpreted,--the aclual process of inner " perception," the relalion of causes between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and may be purely imaginary. This "inner world of
is treated with precisely the same forms and procedures as the " outer " world. We
never come across a single " fact ": pleasure and pain are more recently evolved intellectual
of an immediate causal relation between thoughts, as Logic does, is the result of the coarsest and most clumsy observation. There are all sorts of passions that may intervene between two thoughts : but the interaction is too rapid--that is why we fail to recognise them, that is why we actually deny their existence. . . .
"Thinking," as the epistemologists understand never takes place at all: an absolutely gratuitous fabrication, arrived at by selecting one
element from the process and by eliminating all the rest--an artificial adjustment for the purpose of the understanding. .
The "mind," something that t/zinl's: at times, even, "the mind absolute and pure "--this concept
an evolved and second result of false intro spection, which believes in " thinking ": in the first
appearance"
? phenomena.
. . .
Causality evades us; to assume the existence
? ? is
it,
. .
it is
? 8 THE WILL TO POWER.
place an act is imagined here which does not really occur at all, i. e. "thinking"; and, secondly, a subject-substratum is imagined in which every process of this thinking has its origin, and nothing else--that is to say, both the action and the agent
are fanciful.
478
Phenomenalism must not be sought in the wrong quarter: nothing is more phenomenal, or, to be more precise, nothing is so much deception, as this inner world, which we observe with the "inner sense. "
Our belief that the will is a cause was so great, that, according to our personal experiences in general, we projected a cause into all phenomena
? a certain motive is posited as the cause of all phenomena).
We believe that the thoughts which follow one upon the other in our minds are linked by some sort of causal relation : the logician, more especially, who actually speaks of a host of facts which have never once been seen in reality, has grown ac customed to the prejudice that thoughts are the cause of thoughts.
We believe--and even our philosophers believe it still--that pleasure and pain are the causes of reactions, that the very purpose of pleasure and pain is to occasion reactions. For hundreds of years, pleasure and pain have been represented as the motives for every action. Upon reflection, however, we are bound to concede that everything would have proceeded in exactly the same way, according to precisely the same sequence of cause
(i. e.
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
9
and effect, if the states " pleasure " and " pain' had been entirely absent; and that we are simply deceived when we believe that they actually cause anything :--they are the attendant phenomena, and they have quite a different purpose from that of provoking reactions ; they are in themselves effects involved in the process of reaction which takes place.
In short: Everything that becomes conscious is a final phenomenon, a conclusion--and is the cause of nothing; all succession of phenomena in consciousness is absolutely atomistic--And we tried to understand the universe from the opposite point of view--as if nothing were effective or real, save thinking, feeling, willing! . . .
479
The p/zenonzenalz'sm of tile " inner world. " A chronological inversion takes place, so that the cause reaches consciousness as the effect--We know that pain is projected into a certain part of the body although it is not really situated there; we have learnt that 'all sensations which were ingenuously supposed to be conditioned by the outer world are, as a matter of fact, conditioned by the inner world: that the real action of the outer world never takes place in a way of which we can become conscious. . . . That fragment of the outer world of which we become conscious, is born after the effect produced by the outer world has been recorded, and is subsequently interpreted as the "cause" of that effect. . . .
? ? ? ? IO THE \VILL TO POWER.
In the phenomenalism Of the " inner world," the chronological order of cause and effect is inverted. The fundamental fact of "inner experience " that the cause imagined after the effect has been recorded. . . The same holds good of the sequence of thoughts: we seek for the reason of thought, before has reached our consciousness; and then
the reason reaches consciousness first, whereupon follows its effect. . All our dreams are the in terpretation of our collective feelings with the view of discovering the possible causes of the latter; and the process such that condition only becomes conscious, when the supposed causal link has reached consciousness. * "
? . The whole of "inner experience
this: that a cause sought and imagined which accounts for certain irritation in our nerve-centres, and that only the cause which found in this way which reaches consciousness; this cause may
have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause ----it a sort of groping assisted by former "inner experiences," that to say, by memory. The memory, however, retains the habit of old inter pretations,---that to say, of erroneous causality, ---so that "inner experience " comprises in itself all the results of former erroneous fabrications of
causes. Our "outside world," as we conceive every instant, indissolubly bound up with the
* When in our dream we hear bell ringing, or tapping at our door, we scarcely ever wake before having already accounted for the sound, in the terms of the dream-world we were in. --TR.
founded on
? ? a
a
a
is
is
it
is,
is
is
.
is
it
is a
is
it
.
is
is
is
a
.
? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 11
old error of cause: we interpret by means of the schematism of "the thing," etc.
"Inner experience " only enters consciousness when has found a language which the individual can understand--that to say, translation of certain condition into conditions with which he familiar; " understand " means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms
of something old or familiar. For instance, "I feel unwiell "--a judgment of this sort presupposes a very great and recent neutrality on the part of the observer: the simple man always says, "This and that make me feel unwell,"--he begins to be clear
concerning his indisposition only after he has dis covered a reason for it. . . This what call a lack ofphilological knowledge; to be able to read a text, as such, without reading an interpretation into the latest form of " inner experience,"--
perhaps barely possible form.
480
There are no such things as "mind," reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or truth: they all belong to fiction, and can serve no purpose. It
not question of " subject and object," but of particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, re~
gularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalised). .
Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It therefore obvious that increases with each advance of power.
? ? ? . . .
is
is
is a
it is
it
.
.
.
is
~. . . vw'v.
. '-----
as". . -
Ema,"
r . . _
. . . _.
MM
'10-. " WWW
a
is a
a
. . .
it, is
it
I
a
? I2 TlIE \'VILL TO POWER.
The purpose of " knowledge ": in this case, as in the case of " good " or " beautiful," the concept must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating ascheme of conduct. The utility of preservation--and not some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception--stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge; . . . they evolve in such a way that their observations may suffice for our preservation. In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the Will to Power grows in a certain species : a species gets, a grasp of a given amount of reality, in order to master in order to enlist that amount in its service.
(0) THE BELIEF 1N THE "Eco. " SUBJECT.
48! .
In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," would say: No, facts are precisely what lacking, all that exists consists of interpreta tions. We cannot establish any fact " in itself ": may even be nonsense to desire to do such thing, " Everything subjective," ye say: but that in self interpretation. The "subject"
? given, but something superimposed by fancy, som e_
. nothing\
? ? l
it, it
'
is
is
is
I
is
a
it,
? THE WILL TO POWER' IN SCIENCE.
thing introduced behind. --Is it necessary to set an interpreter behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis.
To the extent to which knowledge has any sense at all, the world is knowable: but it may be
it has not one sense behind but hundreds of senses. --" Perspectivity. "
our needs that inteqoret the world; our in stincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which would fain impose upon all the other instincts as their norm.
482.
Where our ignorance really begins, at that point from which we can see no further, we set word for instance, the word " I," the word " do," the word " suffer "--these concepts may be the horizon lines of our knowledge, but they are not " truths. "
483.
Owing to the phenomenon "thought," the ego taken for granted; but up to the present every
body believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion "I think," and that by analogy with our under standing-of all other causal reactions this "I" was the given muse of the thinking. However custom ary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imagin
interpreted a'gflerently,
13
? ? ? is
it, It
a ;
it
is a
is
? THE WILL TO POWER.
I4
ary nature ofits origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.
484.
"Something is thought, therefore there is some thing that thinks ": this is what Descartes' argu ment amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion " substance " as an a priori truth :---that there must be something " that thinks " when we think, is merely a formula tion of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here--and it is not merely an ascertainment offact. . . . On Descartes'
? lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith.
Ifthe proposition be reduced to " Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the "reality of thought," is not touched upon,---so that, in this form, the "apparitional character" of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was,
that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.
485.
The concept substance is an 'outcome of the concept subject: and not conversely! Ifwe sur render the concept soul, "the subject," the very conditions for the concept " substance ? ' are lack
ing. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost.
? ? ? ? '
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. I!
Criticism of "reality": what does a "plus or minus of reality " lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe?
The degree Of our feeling of life and power (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of "Being," "reality," " non appearance. "
Subject: this is the term we apply to our belief in an entity underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality: we regard this belief as the effect of a cause,--and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine "truth," "reality," " substantial ity. "--" Subject " is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first
created the " similarity " Of these states ; the similis ing and adjusting of them is the fact--nut their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).
486.
One would have to know what Being in order to be able to decide whether this or that real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness ");
would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth--But, as we do not know these things, criticism of the faculty of knowledge nonsensical: how possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even de fine itself!
? ? it it is
is
is
a
it is
is,
? I6 THE WILL 'TO POWER.
487.
Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend P--that is to say, our belief in the "ego" as a substance, as the only reality according to which, alone, we are able to ascribe reality to things? The oldest realism at length comes to light, simultaneously with man's recognition of the fact that his whole religious history is no more than a history of soul-superstitions. Here there is a barrier: our very thinking, itself, involves that belief (with its distinctions--substance, accident, action, agent, etc. ); to abandon it would mean to cease from being able to think.
But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth. may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without
feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as ' absolute realities.
488.
The psychological origin of our belief in reason. -- The ideas "reality," " Being," are derived from our subject-feeling.
" Subject," interpreted through ourselves so that the ego may stand as substance, as the cause of action, as the agent.
The metaphysico-logical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc. etc. , draws its convincing character from our habit of regarding all'our actions as the result of our will: so that
? ? ? ? Everything
THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
I7
the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the mul tiplicity of changes--But there is no such thing as will.
_ We have no categories which allow us to separate a "world as thing-in-itself," from " a world of appearance. " All our categories of reason have a sensual origin: they are deductions from the empirical world. "The soul," " the ego "---the history of these concepts shows that here, also, the
oldest distinction (". spiritus," " life ") obtains. . . . If there is nothing material, then there can be nothing immaterial. The concept no longer means
anything.
No subject-"atoms. " The sphere of a subject
increasing or diminishing unremittingly, the centre of the. system continually displacing itself; in the event of the system no longer being able to organ ise the appropriated mass, it divides into two. On the other hand, it is able, without destroying
to transform weaker subject into one of its own functionaries, and, to certain extent, to compose a new entity with- it. Not "substance," but rather something which in itself strives after
greater strength; and which wishes to "preserve" itself only indirectly wishes to surpass itself).
489.
that reaches consciousness as an "entity" already enormously complicated: we
'never have anything more than the semblance an entity.
The phenomenon of the body the richer, more VOL. 11.
? of
? ? B
is
a
.
is
(it
a
a
it,
? 18 ' THE WILL TO POWER.
distinct, and more tangible phenomenon : it should be methodically drawn to the front, and no mention should be made of its ultimate significance.
490
The assumption of a single subject is perhaps not necessary; it may be equally permissible to assume a plurality of subjects, whose interaction and struggle lie at the bottom of our thought and our consciousness in general. A sort of aristocracy of "cells" in which the ruling power is vested P Of course an aristocracy Of equals, who are accus tomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how to command P
My hypotheses: The subject as a plurality.
Pain intellectual and dependent upon the
judgment " harmful," projected.
The effect always " unconscious ": the in
ferred and imagined cause is projected, it follows the event.
Pleasure is a form of pain.
The only kind of power that exists is of the
same nature as the power of will: a com manding of other subjects which thereupon alter themselves.
The unremitting transientness and volatility of the subject. " Mortal soul. "
Number as perspective form.
491
The belief in the body is more fundamental than the belief in the soul: the latter arose from
? ? ? ATHE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
the unscientific observation of the agonies of the body. (Something which leaves it. The belief in the truth of dreams. )
492
The body and physiology the starting-point: why P--We obtain correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that to say, as number of regents at the head of community (not as "souls " or as " life-forces as also of the depend ence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of hierarchy, and of the division of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain correct image of the way in which the living entities con tinually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the "subject we realise that the struggle finds expression in obey
ing as well as in commanding, and that fluctuat ing definition of the limits of power factor of life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler
kept, of the individual performances and even disturbances taking place in the community, also \ belong to the conditions under which government
may be carried on. In short, we obtain valua tion even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsifica tion, and of perspective. What most important, however, that we regard the ruler and his sub
? 19
? as of the same hind, all feeling, willing, thinking--and that wherever we see or suspect movement in body, we conclude that there
jects
is, a
is
'. __.
~m,--_______
. __. . _. is
Mp.
is
a
is a
a
";
a
a
a
a "), a
is
? ? ? 20 THE WILL TO POWER.
co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Move ment as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought.
The danger of directly questioning thesubjectcon ceming the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection. consists in this, that it might be a necessary con dition of its activity to interpret itself erroneously. That is why we appeal to the body and lay the evidence of sharpened senses aside: or we try and see whether the subjects themselves cannot enter into communication with us.
(d) BIOLOGY OF THE INSTINCT or KNOWLEDGE. PERSPECTIVITY.
493
Trut/i is that kind of error without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. The value for Life is ultimately decisive.
494
It is unlikely that our "knowledge" extends farther than is exactly necessary for our self-pres ervation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in pro
portion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase.
495
? \
If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie " be re futed, the sense for truth will then have to justify
? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE. 21
itself before another tribunal--as a means to the preservation of man, as Will to Power.
Likewise our love of the beautiful : it is also the creative will. Both senses stand side by side; the sense of truth is the means wherewith the power is appropriated to adjust things according to one's taste. The love of adjusting and reforming--a primeval love! We can only take eogm'sanee of a world which we ourselves have made.
496
Concerning the multifariousness of knowledge. The tracing of its relation to many other things (or the relation of kind)--how should " knowledge " be of another? The way to know and to investigate is in itself among the conditions of life; that is why the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for ourselves) than the kind which serves the purpose of our preservation is an ex cessively hasty one: this actual condition may be only an accidental, not in the least an essential one.
Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not adjusted for " knowledge. "
497
The most strongly credited a priori "truths " are, to my mind, mere assumptions pendingfurther investigation; for instance, the law of causation is
? ? ? ? 22 THE WILL TO POWER.
a belief so thoroughly acquired by practice and so completely assimilated, that to disbelieve in it would mean the ruin of our kind. But is it therefore true? What an extraordinary conclu sion! As if truth were proved by the mere fact that man survives!
498
To what extent is our intellect also a result of the conditions of life P--We should not have it did we not need to have and we should not have
we did not need as we need we could live otherwise.
499
" Thinking " in
bersevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal--In our thought, the essential factor the harmonising of the new material with the old schemes (= Pro crustes' bed), the assimilation of the unfamiliar.
500.
The perception" of the senses projected out wards: " inwards and " outwards "--does the
body command here?
The same equalising and Ordering power which
rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorpora tion of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation
as we have --that to say,
? primitive (inorganic) state to
_
? ? is
a
if if
it,
is
it it
is
it,
it
? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
and harmonisation in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the "impression. "
501.
All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of comparing,' has as a first condition the act of equalising, and earlier still the act of "making equal. " The process of making equal is the same as the assimilation by the amoeba. 0f the nutritive matter it appropriates.
" Memory " late, in so far as the equalising in stinct appears to have been suoa'uea' : the difference is preserved. Memory--a process of classification and collocation; active--who?
23
? 502.
In regard to the memory, we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a "soul," which, irre spective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live "in the memory"; I have noth ing to do with it when memory "comes," my will is inactive in regard to as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which become conscious: now some
thing similar comes--who has called forth? Who has awakened it?
* The German word verglez'clzen, meaning " to compare,' contains the ruOt "equal" (glez'e/z) which cannot be rendered in English--TR.
? ? it
I
it,
? 24
THE WILL TO POWER.
503.
The whole apparatus of knowledge is an ab stracting and simplifying apparatus--not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things: "end" and "means" are as remote from the
essence of this apparatus as "concepts" are. By the "end" and the " means " a process is appro priated (--a process is invented which may be grasped)," but by "concepts" one appropriates the
" things which constitute the process.
504.
Consciousness begins outwardly as co-ordina tion and knowledge of impressiofis,--at first it is at the point which is remotest from the biological centre of the individual ; but it is a process which deepens and which tends to become more and more an inner function, continually approaching nearer to the centre.
505.
Our perceptions, as we understand them--that is to say, the sum of all those perceptions the con sciousness whereof was useful and essential to us and to the whole organic processes which preceded us: therefore they do not include all perceptions (for instance, not the electrical ones) ;---that is to say, we have senses only for a definite selection of perceptions--such perceptions as concern us with a
view to our self-preservation. Consciousness extends so far only as it is useful. There can be no doubt that all our sense-perceptions are entirely per
? ? ? ? THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
25
meated by valuations (useful or harmful--conse
quently, pleasant or painful). Every particular colour; besides being a colour, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit or do so only after has affected us exclusively for long time, as in the case of convicts in gaol or lunatics). In sects likewise react in different ways to different colours: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are case in point.
506.
In the beginning images--how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, ap plied to images. Finally conceots, possible only when there are words--the assembling of several pictures into whole which not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word " generates,----that then,' which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word used,--this simple emotion the common factor, the basis of a concept That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same,
the fundamental fact. There therefore con fusion of two very intimately associated feelings the ascertainment of these feelings ;--but who
that ascertains?