THE
COMPLETE
WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR.
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR.
Nietzsche - Works - v15 - Will to Power - b
The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche.
The first complete and
authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/umn. 31951p00485524g
Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain in the United States of America. It may not be in the public domain in other countries. Copies are provided as a preservation service. Particularly outside of the United States, persons receiving copies should make appropriate efforts to determine the copyright status of the work in their country and use the work accordingly. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? ? ? in, "agar-=4". '
an
? ? ? ? THE LIBRARY
? Wilson Library
? ? ? . ,0 I' iv. v'. ' f
Q . y" ;\6. ' 'vli'. ,. ei,mfiu-
vii:
V,C
\f,. '.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR. OSCAR LEVY
. 0 , {I
. '''
NIETZSCHE
? VOLUME IFT EEN
THE WILL TO POWER Rooxs THREE AND FOUR
? ? -
i
F
I'.
\
'I ,
? ? 0f the Third Impression making Four Thousand Five Hundred Copies this is
Na. . . . 3121. . .
? ? ? I
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCI-IE THE
WILL TO POWER
AN ATTEMPTED TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
VOL. II Booxs III AND IV
? NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924.
? ? _. _. . . . . . - __r m" ~-~. . --. ,- --_. . _
'e.
? ? First publirlud Reprintad . lerintel .
. .
. .
. . 1924
(All rig/It: nun/ed)
Printed in Great Bn'im'n 6y Tm: snmnuncn PRESS, EDINBURGH
19w 2914
? ? ? In compliance with current
copyright law, the University of Minnesota Bindery produced this facsimile on permanent-durable paper to replace the irreparany deteriorated original volume owned by the University of Minnesota Library. 1996
? ? ? ? \
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE - - - ~ vii
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
? I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE--
(a) The Method of Investigation -
(b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology
(a) The Belief in the " Ego. " Subject
(a') Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Per
spectivity- - - - -
-20 - 26
- 38
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic -
-
- - - - -
(f) Consciousness - - (g) Judgment. True--False -
-
(/1) Against Causality - - - (z') The Thing-in-ltself and Appearance (k) The Metaphysical Need - - (l) The Biological Value of Knowledge
(m)Science - - - -
- 53 - 62
- 74 - 96 - 99
-
II. THE WILL TO POWER 1N NATURE----
1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World
109
' 2. The Will to Power as Life--
(a) The Organic Process - - -
(6)Man - - - - - -132
- 123 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations - 161
-
- -
-
43
- - 3 - - 5
- - 12
? ? ? vi CONTENTS OF VOL. 11.
PAGE [11. THE WILL T0 POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN
"(8' SOCIETY AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL--
1. Society and the State - - - -
---
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING. I. THE ORDER or RANK--
- 366
-
. L V1 2. The Individual
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
-----
183 214
239
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank
2. The Strong and the Weak- 3. TheNobleMan - - - -
4. The Lords of the Earth - - - 5. TheGreatMan - - - -
6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future
II. DIONYSUS - - - - - III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE - - -
295
-- ---
298 - 350 - 360
? 373 - 388 - 422
? ? ? EDITOR'S FOREWORD
THE two volumes of The Will to Power have been revised afresh by their translator. He, the most gifted and conscientious of my collaborators, would have added his corrections to the second edition of these books, had it not been that five years of war and war-service prevented him from accomplishing a task which he always judged necessary. The changes made are numerous and
well able to throw light upon many a dark passage, but the actual faults of translation were few in number, so that the first and second editions are by no means invalidated by this third one.
. OSCAR LEVY. i PARIS, 1st March 1924.
? ? ? ? n
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
FOR the history of the text constituting this volume would refer readers to my preface to be Will to
Power, Books and II. , where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the com plete work.
In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various
? of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to
art, and to metaphysics.
Throughout Part of the Third Book we find
him going to great pains to impress the fact upon us that science as arbitrary as art in its mode of
departments
and that the knowledge of the scientist but the outcome of his inexorable will to power
interpreting facts in the terms of the self-pre servative conditions of the particular order of human
to which he belongs. In Aphorisms
and which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part Nietzsche says distinctly:
"The object not to know,' but to schematise,-- to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs require. "
Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great
procedure, v
beings
515
? ? is
I.
'
1. ,
is
I.
5I 6,
is
I
. -. '-'. _? . . ---.
T
? viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
danger: hence, everything marl be explained, as similated, and rendered capable of calculation, if Nature is to be mastered and controlled.
Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense--
always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable.
Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of diges tion which compels an organism to make things " like " (to " assimilate ") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that
hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amoeba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknow ledged to be merely a form of the same funda mental will.
An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inabilizjl.
The whole argument of Part 1. tends to draw
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ix
science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux.
In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which " creates the impression of Being out of Becoming " (Aph. 517).
According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear al together (Aph. 52 3), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolu
? form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would
also have required to have been deified.
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism--in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped,
are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond
tionary
? ? ? X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
(eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself
(God Omniscient).
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR. OSCAR LEVY
. 0 , {I
. '''
NIETZSCHE
? VOLUME IFT EEN
THE WILL TO POWER Rooxs THREE AND FOUR
? ? -
i
F
I'.
\
'I ,
? ? 0f the Third Impression making Four Thousand Five Hundred Copies this is
Na. . . . 3121. . .
? ? ? I
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCI-IE THE
WILL TO POWER
AN ATTEMPTED TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
VOL. II Booxs III AND IV
? NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924.
? ? _. _. . . . . . - __r m" ~-~. . --. ,- --_. . _
'e.
? ? First publirlud Reprintad . lerintel .
. .
. .
. . 1924
(All rig/It: nun/ed)
Printed in Great Bn'im'n 6y Tm: snmnuncn PRESS, EDINBURGH
19w 2914
? ? ? In compliance with current
copyright law, the University of Minnesota Bindery produced this facsimile on permanent-durable paper to replace the irreparany deteriorated original volume owned by the University of Minnesota Library. 1996
? ? ? ? \
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE - - - ~ vii
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
? I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE--
(a) The Method of Investigation -
(b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology
(a) The Belief in the " Ego. " Subject
(a') Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Per
spectivity- - - - -
-20 - 26
- 38
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic -
-
- - - - -
(f) Consciousness - - (g) Judgment. True--False -
-
(/1) Against Causality - - - (z') The Thing-in-ltself and Appearance (k) The Metaphysical Need - - (l) The Biological Value of Knowledge
(m)Science - - - -
- 53 - 62
- 74 - 96 - 99
-
II. THE WILL TO POWER 1N NATURE----
1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World
109
' 2. The Will to Power as Life--
(a) The Organic Process - - -
(6)Man - - - - - -132
- 123 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations - 161
-
- -
-
43
- - 3 - - 5
- - 12
? ? ? vi CONTENTS OF VOL. 11.
PAGE [11. THE WILL T0 POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN
"(8' SOCIETY AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL--
1. Society and the State - - - -
---
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING. I. THE ORDER or RANK--
- 366
-
. L V1 2. The Individual
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
-----
183 214
239
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank
2. The Strong and the Weak- 3. TheNobleMan - - - -
4. The Lords of the Earth - - - 5. TheGreatMan - - - -
6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future
II. DIONYSUS - - - - - III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE - - -
295
-- ---
298 - 350 - 360
? 373 - 388 - 422
? ? ? EDITOR'S FOREWORD
THE two volumes of The Will to Power have been revised afresh by their translator. He, the most gifted and conscientious of my collaborators, would have added his corrections to the second edition of these books, had it not been that five years of war and war-service prevented him from accomplishing a task which he always judged necessary. The changes made are numerous and
well able to throw light upon many a dark passage, but the actual faults of translation were few in number, so that the first and second editions are by no means invalidated by this third one.
. OSCAR LEVY. i PARIS, 1st March 1924.
? ? ? ? n
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
FOR the history of the text constituting this volume would refer readers to my preface to be Will to
Power, Books and II. , where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the com plete work.
In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various
? of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to
art, and to metaphysics.
Throughout Part of the Third Book we find
him going to great pains to impress the fact upon us that science as arbitrary as art in its mode of
departments
and that the knowledge of the scientist but the outcome of his inexorable will to power
interpreting facts in the terms of the self-pre servative conditions of the particular order of human
to which he belongs. In Aphorisms
and which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part Nietzsche says distinctly:
"The object not to know,' but to schematise,-- to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs require. "
Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great
procedure, v
beings
515
? ? is
I.
'
1. ,
is
I.
5I 6,
is
I
. -. '-'. _? . . ---.
T
? viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
danger: hence, everything marl be explained, as similated, and rendered capable of calculation, if Nature is to be mastered and controlled.
Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense--
always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable.
Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of diges tion which compels an organism to make things " like " (to " assimilate ") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that
hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amoeba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknow ledged to be merely a form of the same funda mental will.
An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inabilizjl.
The whole argument of Part 1. tends to draw
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ix
science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux.
In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which " creates the impression of Being out of Becoming " (Aph. 517).
According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear al together (Aph. 52 3), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolu
? form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would
also have required to have been deified.
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism--in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped,
are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond
tionary
? ? ? X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
(eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself
(God Omniscient).
With, the question of Truth we find Nietzsche
quite as ready to uphold his thesis as with all other questions. He frankly declares that " the criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power " (Aph. 534), and thus stands in diametrical opposition to Spencer, who makes constraint or inability the criterion of truth. (See Principles of Psychology, new edition, chapter ix. . . . "the unconceivableness of its negation is the ultimate
'
we shall find that it is actually substantiated by experience; for the activity of our senses certainly convinces us more or less according to the degree to which it is provoked. Thus, if we walked for long round a completely dark room, and everything yielded, however slightly, to our touch, we should remain quite unconvinced that we were in a room at all, more particularly if--to suppose a still more impossible case--the floor yielded too. What provokes great activity in the bulbs of our
fingers, then, likewise generates the sensation of i truth.
From this Nietzsche proceeds to argue that what provokes the strongest sentiments in ourselves is also true to us, and, from the standpoint of thought, "that which gives thought the greatest sensation
test of the truth of a proposition. ")
However paradoxical Nietzsche's view may seem,
? of strength " (Aph.
The provocation of intense emotion, and there
fore the provocation of that state in which the body is above the normal in power, thus becomes
533).
? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi
the index to truth; and it is a very remarkable thing that two prominent English thinkers should, at the very end of their careers, have practically admitted this, despite the fact that all their philo sophical productions had been based upon a com
different belief. I refer, of course, to Spencer and Buckle, who both upheld the view that in a system of thought the emotional factor is of the highest importance.
It follows from all this, that lies and false doctrines may quite conceivably prove to be even more preservative to species than truth itself, and although this is a view we have already encountered in the opening aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, in Aph. 538 of this volume we find it further elucidated by Nietzsche's useful demon stration of the fact that "the easier way of think ing always triumphs over the more difficult way "; and that logic, inasmuch as it facilitated classifica--
tion and orderly ' thought, ultimately " got to act like truth. "
Before leaving Part with which would be impossible to deal in full, word or two ought to be said in regard to Nietzsche's views concerning the belief in " cause and effect. " In the Genealogy of Moral; (Ist Essay, Aph. 3), we have already read forecast of our author's more elaborate opinions on this question, and the aphorism in question might be read with advantage in conjunc
tion with the discussion on the subject found in this
pletely
? book (Aphs.
The whole of Nietzsche's criticism, however, re
545-552).
solves itself into this, that the doctrine of causality
? ? a
I
I. , a.
it
? xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
begins with an unnecessary duplication of all that happens. Language, and its origin among a people uneducated in thoughts and concepts, is at the root of this'scientific superstition, and Nietzsche traces its evolution from the primeval and savage desire always to find a " doer " behind every deed : to find some one who is responsible and who, being known, thus modifies the unfamiliarity of the deed which requires explaining. "The so-called instinct of causality [of which Kant speaks with so much as
'
In Aph. 585 (A), we have a very coherent and therefore valuable exposition of much that may still seem Obscure in Nietzsche's standpoint, and we might almost regard this aphorism as the key to the epistemology of the" Will to Power. When we find the " will to truth defined merely as " the longing for a stable world," we are in possession of the very leitmotiv of Nietzsche's thOught through out Part and most Of what follows clearly but an elaboration of this thought.
In Part II. Nietzsche reveals himself as utterly opposed to all mechanistic and materialistic inter pretations of the Universe. He exalts the spirit and repudiates the idea that mere pressure from without--naked environment--is to be held re sponsible (and often guilty! ) for all that material istic science would lay at its door. Darwin again comes in for a good deal of sharp criticism; and, to those who are familiar with the nature of Nietzsche's disagreement with this naturalist, such aphorisms as Nos. 643, 647, 649, 651, 684, 685,
surance] unfamiliar.
authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/umn. 31951p00485524g
Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
We have determined this work to be in the public domain in the United States of America. It may not be in the public domain in other countries. Copies are provided as a preservation service. Particularly outside of the United States, persons receiving copies should make appropriate efforts to determine the copyright status of the work in their country and use the work accordingly. It is possible that current copyright holders, heirs or the estate of the authors of individual portions of the work, such as illustrations or photographs, assert copyrights over these portions. Depending on the nature of subsequent use that is made, additional rights may need to be obtained independently of anything we can address. The digital images and OCR of this work were produced by Google, Inc. (indicated by a watermark on each page in the PageTurner). Google requests that the images and OCR not be re-hosted, redistributed or used commercially. The images are provided for educational, scholarly, non-commercial purposes.
? ? ? in, "agar-=4". '
an
? ? ? ? THE LIBRARY
? Wilson Library
? ? ? . ,0 I' iv. v'. ' f
Q . y" ;\6. ' 'vli'. ,. ei,mfiu-
vii:
V,C
\f,. '.
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR. OSCAR LEVY
. 0 , {I
. '''
NIETZSCHE
? VOLUME IFT EEN
THE WILL TO POWER Rooxs THREE AND FOUR
? ? -
i
F
I'.
\
'I ,
? ? 0f the Third Impression making Four Thousand Five Hundred Copies this is
Na. . . . 3121. . .
? ? ? I
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCI-IE THE
WILL TO POWER
AN ATTEMPTED TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
VOL. II Booxs III AND IV
? NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924.
? ? _. _. . . . . . - __r m" ~-~. . --. ,- --_. . _
'e.
? ? First publirlud Reprintad . lerintel .
. .
. .
. . 1924
(All rig/It: nun/ed)
Printed in Great Bn'im'n 6y Tm: snmnuncn PRESS, EDINBURGH
19w 2914
? ? ? In compliance with current
copyright law, the University of Minnesota Bindery produced this facsimile on permanent-durable paper to replace the irreparany deteriorated original volume owned by the University of Minnesota Library. 1996
? ? ? ? \
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE - - - ~ vii
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
? I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE--
(a) The Method of Investigation -
(b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology
(a) The Belief in the " Ego. " Subject
(a') Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Per
spectivity- - - - -
-20 - 26
- 38
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic -
-
- - - - -
(f) Consciousness - - (g) Judgment. True--False -
-
(/1) Against Causality - - - (z') The Thing-in-ltself and Appearance (k) The Metaphysical Need - - (l) The Biological Value of Knowledge
(m)Science - - - -
- 53 - 62
- 74 - 96 - 99
-
II. THE WILL TO POWER 1N NATURE----
1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World
109
' 2. The Will to Power as Life--
(a) The Organic Process - - -
(6)Man - - - - - -132
- 123 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations - 161
-
- -
-
43
- - 3 - - 5
- - 12
? ? ? vi CONTENTS OF VOL. 11.
PAGE [11. THE WILL T0 POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN
"(8' SOCIETY AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL--
1. Society and the State - - - -
---
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING. I. THE ORDER or RANK--
- 366
-
. L V1 2. The Individual
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
-----
183 214
239
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank
2. The Strong and the Weak- 3. TheNobleMan - - - -
4. The Lords of the Earth - - - 5. TheGreatMan - - - -
6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future
II. DIONYSUS - - - - - III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE - - -
295
-- ---
298 - 350 - 360
? 373 - 388 - 422
? ? ? EDITOR'S FOREWORD
THE two volumes of The Will to Power have been revised afresh by their translator. He, the most gifted and conscientious of my collaborators, would have added his corrections to the second edition of these books, had it not been that five years of war and war-service prevented him from accomplishing a task which he always judged necessary. The changes made are numerous and
well able to throw light upon many a dark passage, but the actual faults of translation were few in number, so that the first and second editions are by no means invalidated by this third one.
. OSCAR LEVY. i PARIS, 1st March 1924.
? ? ? ? n
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
FOR the history of the text constituting this volume would refer readers to my preface to be Will to
Power, Books and II. , where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the com plete work.
In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various
? of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to
art, and to metaphysics.
Throughout Part of the Third Book we find
him going to great pains to impress the fact upon us that science as arbitrary as art in its mode of
departments
and that the knowledge of the scientist but the outcome of his inexorable will to power
interpreting facts in the terms of the self-pre servative conditions of the particular order of human
to which he belongs. In Aphorisms
and which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part Nietzsche says distinctly:
"The object not to know,' but to schematise,-- to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs require. "
Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great
procedure, v
beings
515
? ? is
I.
'
1. ,
is
I.
5I 6,
is
I
. -. '-'. _? . . ---.
T
? viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
danger: hence, everything marl be explained, as similated, and rendered capable of calculation, if Nature is to be mastered and controlled.
Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense--
always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable.
Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of diges tion which compels an organism to make things " like " (to " assimilate ") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that
hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amoeba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknow ledged to be merely a form of the same funda mental will.
An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inabilizjl.
The whole argument of Part 1. tends to draw
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ix
science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux.
In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which " creates the impression of Being out of Becoming " (Aph. 517).
According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear al together (Aph. 52 3), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolu
? form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would
also have required to have been deified.
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism--in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped,
are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond
tionary
? ? ? X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
(eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself
(God Omniscient).
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH
Tlu First Complete and Authorised English Tramlaiion
EDITED BY
DR. OSCAR LEVY
. 0 , {I
. '''
NIETZSCHE
? VOLUME IFT EEN
THE WILL TO POWER Rooxs THREE AND FOUR
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? ? 0f the Third Impression making Four Thousand Five Hundred Copies this is
Na. . . . 3121. . .
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCI-IE THE
WILL TO POWER
AN ATTEMPTED TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
VOL. II Booxs III AND IV
? NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924.
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? ? First publirlud Reprintad . lerintel .
. .
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. . 1924
(All rig/It: nun/ed)
Printed in Great Bn'im'n 6y Tm: snmnuncn PRESS, EDINBURGH
19w 2914
? ? ? In compliance with current
copyright law, the University of Minnesota Bindery produced this facsimile on permanent-durable paper to replace the irreparany deteriorated original volume owned by the University of Minnesota Library. 1996
? ? ? ? \
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE - - - ~ vii
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
? I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE--
(a) The Method of Investigation -
(b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology
(a) The Belief in the " Ego. " Subject
(a') Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Per
spectivity- - - - -
-20 - 26
- 38
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic -
-
- - - - -
(f) Consciousness - - (g) Judgment. True--False -
-
(/1) Against Causality - - - (z') The Thing-in-ltself and Appearance (k) The Metaphysical Need - - (l) The Biological Value of Knowledge
(m)Science - - - -
- 53 - 62
- 74 - 96 - 99
-
II. THE WILL TO POWER 1N NATURE----
1. The Mechanical Interpretation of the World
109
' 2. The Will to Power as Life--
(a) The Organic Process - - -
(6)Man - - - - - -132
- 123 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations - 161
-
- -
-
43
- - 3 - - 5
- - 12
? ? ? vi CONTENTS OF VOL. 11.
PAGE [11. THE WILL T0 POWER AS EXEMPLIFIED IN
"(8' SOCIETY AND IN THE INDIVIDUAL--
1. Society and the State - - - -
---
FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING. I. THE ORDER or RANK--
- 366
-
. L V1 2. The Individual
IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART
-----
183 214
239
1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank
2. The Strong and the Weak- 3. TheNobleMan - - - -
4. The Lords of the Earth - - - 5. TheGreatMan - - - -
6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future
II. DIONYSUS - - - - - III. ETERNAL RECURRENCE - - -
295
-- ---
298 - 350 - 360
? 373 - 388 - 422
? ? ? EDITOR'S FOREWORD
THE two volumes of The Will to Power have been revised afresh by their translator. He, the most gifted and conscientious of my collaborators, would have added his corrections to the second edition of these books, had it not been that five years of war and war-service prevented him from accomplishing a task which he always judged necessary. The changes made are numerous and
well able to throw light upon many a dark passage, but the actual faults of translation were few in number, so that the first and second editions are by no means invalidated by this third one.
. OSCAR LEVY. i PARIS, 1st March 1924.
? ? ? ? n
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
FOR the history of the text constituting this volume would refer readers to my preface to be Will to
Power, Books and II. , where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the com plete work.
In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various
? of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to
art, and to metaphysics.
Throughout Part of the Third Book we find
him going to great pains to impress the fact upon us that science as arbitrary as art in its mode of
departments
and that the knowledge of the scientist but the outcome of his inexorable will to power
interpreting facts in the terms of the self-pre servative conditions of the particular order of human
to which he belongs. In Aphorisms
and which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part Nietzsche says distinctly:
"The object not to know,' but to schematise,-- to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs require. "
Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great
procedure, v
beings
515
? ? is
I.
'
1. ,
is
I.
5I 6,
is
I
. -. '-'. _? . . ---.
T
? viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
danger: hence, everything marl be explained, as similated, and rendered capable of calculation, if Nature is to be mastered and controlled.
Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense--
always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable.
Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of diges tion which compels an organism to make things " like " (to " assimilate ") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that
hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amoeba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknow ledged to be merely a form of the same funda mental will.
An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least "necessary," but only a sign of inabilizjl.
The whole argument of Part 1. tends to draw
? ? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ix
science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux.
In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which " creates the impression of Being out of Becoming " (Aph. 517).
According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear al together (Aph. 52 3), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolu
? form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would
also have required to have been deified.
Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism--in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped,
are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man's desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond
tionary
? ? ? X TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
(eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself
(God Omniscient).
With, the question of Truth we find Nietzsche
quite as ready to uphold his thesis as with all other questions. He frankly declares that " the criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power " (Aph. 534), and thus stands in diametrical opposition to Spencer, who makes constraint or inability the criterion of truth. (See Principles of Psychology, new edition, chapter ix. . . . "the unconceivableness of its negation is the ultimate
'
we shall find that it is actually substantiated by experience; for the activity of our senses certainly convinces us more or less according to the degree to which it is provoked. Thus, if we walked for long round a completely dark room, and everything yielded, however slightly, to our touch, we should remain quite unconvinced that we were in a room at all, more particularly if--to suppose a still more impossible case--the floor yielded too. What provokes great activity in the bulbs of our
fingers, then, likewise generates the sensation of i truth.
From this Nietzsche proceeds to argue that what provokes the strongest sentiments in ourselves is also true to us, and, from the standpoint of thought, "that which gives thought the greatest sensation
test of the truth of a proposition. ")
However paradoxical Nietzsche's view may seem,
? of strength " (Aph.
The provocation of intense emotion, and there
fore the provocation of that state in which the body is above the normal in power, thus becomes
533).
? ? ? TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi
the index to truth; and it is a very remarkable thing that two prominent English thinkers should, at the very end of their careers, have practically admitted this, despite the fact that all their philo sophical productions had been based upon a com
different belief. I refer, of course, to Spencer and Buckle, who both upheld the view that in a system of thought the emotional factor is of the highest importance.
It follows from all this, that lies and false doctrines may quite conceivably prove to be even more preservative to species than truth itself, and although this is a view we have already encountered in the opening aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, in Aph. 538 of this volume we find it further elucidated by Nietzsche's useful demon stration of the fact that "the easier way of think ing always triumphs over the more difficult way "; and that logic, inasmuch as it facilitated classifica--
tion and orderly ' thought, ultimately " got to act like truth. "
Before leaving Part with which would be impossible to deal in full, word or two ought to be said in regard to Nietzsche's views concerning the belief in " cause and effect. " In the Genealogy of Moral; (Ist Essay, Aph. 3), we have already read forecast of our author's more elaborate opinions on this question, and the aphorism in question might be read with advantage in conjunc
tion with the discussion on the subject found in this
pletely
? book (Aphs.
The whole of Nietzsche's criticism, however, re
545-552).
solves itself into this, that the doctrine of causality
? ? a
I
I. , a.
it
? xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
begins with an unnecessary duplication of all that happens. Language, and its origin among a people uneducated in thoughts and concepts, is at the root of this'scientific superstition, and Nietzsche traces its evolution from the primeval and savage desire always to find a " doer " behind every deed : to find some one who is responsible and who, being known, thus modifies the unfamiliarity of the deed which requires explaining. "The so-called instinct of causality [of which Kant speaks with so much as
'
In Aph. 585 (A), we have a very coherent and therefore valuable exposition of much that may still seem Obscure in Nietzsche's standpoint, and we might almost regard this aphorism as the key to the epistemology of the" Will to Power. When we find the " will to truth defined merely as " the longing for a stable world," we are in possession of the very leitmotiv of Nietzsche's thOught through out Part and most Of what follows clearly but an elaboration of this thought.
In Part II. Nietzsche reveals himself as utterly opposed to all mechanistic and materialistic inter pretations of the Universe. He exalts the spirit and repudiates the idea that mere pressure from without--naked environment--is to be held re sponsible (and often guilty! ) for all that material istic science would lay at its door. Darwin again comes in for a good deal of sharp criticism; and, to those who are familiar with the nature of Nietzsche's disagreement with this naturalist, such aphorisms as Nos. 643, 647, 649, 651, 684, 685,
surance] unfamiliar.
