No More Learning

The contradiction of the so-called “ facts of
consciousness. " Observation a
Observation a thousand times
more difficult, error is perhaps the absolute con-
dition of observation.
473
The intellect cannot criticise itself, simply be-
cause it 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 is to say, because, in order to
criticise the intellect, we should have to be higher


## p. 6 (#36) ###############################################

6
THE WILL TO POWER.
creatures with "absolute knowledge. " This would
“
presuppose the existence of something, a “thing-
in-itself,” apart from all the perspective kinds of
observation and senso-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 !
475.
Criticism of modern philosophy: erroneous
starting-point, as if there were such things as
“facts of consciousness”-and no phenomenalism
in introspection.
476.
“ 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 ? Our inner world is also“ appearance",
3)


## p. 7 (#37) ###############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE,
7
477.
never
come
across
I ain convinced of the phenomenalism of the
inner world also: everything that reaches our
consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted,
simplified, schematised, interpreted, — the actual
process of inner" perception,” the relation of causes
between thoughts, feelings, desires, between subject
and object, is absolutely concealed from us, and
may be purely imaginary. This “ inner world of
appearance" is treated with precisely the same
forms and procedures as the "outer” world. We
a single "fact”: pleasure
and pain are inore recently evolved intellectual
phenomena.
Causality evades us; to assume the existence
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
it, never takes place at all: it is 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 thinks: at times,
even,“the mind absolute and pure "—this concept
is an evolved and second result of false intro-
spection, which believes in “thinking”: in the first
>
-


## p. 8 (#38) ###############################################

8
THE WILL TO FOWER.
>
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
(i. e. 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


## p. 9 (#39) ###############################################

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 diferent 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 phenomenalism of the "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. .


## p. 10 (#40) ##############################################

10
THE WILL TO POWER.
In the phenomenalism of the “inner world,” the
chronological order of cause and effect is inverted.
The fundamental fact of "inner experience” is,
that the cause is imagined after the effect has been
recorded. . . . The same holds goud of the sequence
of thoughts: we seek for the reason of a thought,
before it 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 is such that a condition only becomes
conscious, when the supposed causal link has
reached consciousness. *
The whole of “inner experience” is founded on
this: that a cause is sought and imagined which
accounts for a certain irritation in our nerve-centres,
and that it is only the cause which is found in this
way which reaches consciousness; this cause may
have absolutely nothing to do with the real cause
-it is a sort of groping assisted by former “inner
experiences," that is to say, by memory. The
memory, however, retains the habit of old inter-
pretations,—that is 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 it
every instant, is indissolubly bound up with the
* When in our dream we hear a bell ringing, or a 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.


## p. 11 (#41) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
11
6
old error of cause: we interpret by means of the
schematism of "the thing," etc.
"Inner experience” only enters consciousness
when it has found a language which the individual
can understand—that is to say, a translation oi a
certain condition into conditions with which he is
familiar;
“ understand” means
simply this:
to be able to express something new in the terms
of something old or familiar. For instance, “I
feel unwell
-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 is what I call
a lack of philological knowledge; to be able to read
a text, as such, without reading an interpretation
into it, is the latest form of “inner experience,”-
it is perhaps a 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
is not a question of “subject and object,” but of a
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 is therefore obvious that it increases with each
advance of power.


## p. 12 (#42) ##############################################

12
THE WILL 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 a scheme 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 it, in order to enlist that amount
in its service.
(c)
© THE BELIEF IN THE "EGO. " SUBJECT.
481.
In opposition to Positivism, which halts at
phenomena and says, “These are only facts and
nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely
what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpreta-
tions. We cannot establish any fact" in itself”: it
may even be nonsense to desire to do such a things
Everything is subjective,” ye say: but that in it
self is interpretation The “subject” is nothing
given, but something superimposed by fancy, some-
66


## p. 13 (#43) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
13
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
interpreted differently, it has not one sense behind
it, but hundreds of senses. —“ Perspectivity. ”
It is our needs that interpret the world; our in-
stincts and their impulses for and against. Every
instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its
point of view, which it 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 a 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
is 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 cause of the thinking. However custom-
ary and indispensable this fiction may have become
now, this fact proves nothing against the imagin-


## p. 14 (#44) ##############################################

14
THE WILL TO POWER.
a
ary nature of its 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 of fact. . . . On Descartes'
lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but
only the fact of a very powerful faith.
If the 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! If we 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.
1


## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
15
"
6
:
(6
"
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—not their
similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to
be denied).
» «
486.
One would have to know what Being is, in
order to be able to decide whether this or that
is real (for instance, “ the facts of consciousness'));
it would also be necessary to know what certainty
and knowledge are, and so forth. —But, as we do
not know these things, a criticism of the faculty of
knowledge is nonsensical : how is it possible for an
instrument to criticise itself, when it is itself that
exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even de-
fine itself!


## p. 16 (#46) ##############################################

16
THE WILL TO POWER.
487.
>
Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the
first principles on which the reasoning processes
depend ? —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


## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
17
a
.
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 it,
to transform a weaker subject into one of its own
functionaries, and, to a certain extent, to compose
a new entity with it. Not a "substance," but
rather something which in itself strives after
greater strength; and which wishes to "preserve
itself only indirectly (it wishes to surpass itself).
"
489.
Everything that reaches consciousness as an
entity” is already enormously complicated: we
never have anything more than the semblance of
an entity.
The phenomenon of the body is the richer, more
VOL. II.
B


## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################

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 ? Of
course an aristocracy of equals, who are accus-
tomed to ruling co-operatively, and understand how
to command ?
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


## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
19
the unscientific observation of the agonies of the
body. (Something which leaves it. The belief
in the truth of dreams. )
(G
6
492.
The body and physiology the starting-point:
why? -We obtain a correct image of the nature
of our subject-entity, that is to say, as a number
of regents at the head of a 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 a hierarchy, and of the division
of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of
the part and the whole. We also obtain a 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 a fluctuat-
ing definition of the limits of power is a factor of
life. The comparative ignorance in which the ruler
is 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 a valua-
tion even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things-
generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsifica-
tion, and of perspective. What is most important,
however, is, that we regard the ruler and his sub-
jects as of the same kind, all feeling, willing,
thinking—and that wherever we see or suspect
movement in a body, we conclude that there is


## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################

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 the subject con-
cerning 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 OF KNOWLEDGE.
PERSPECTIVITY.
493
Truth 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


## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################

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 cognisance 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 pending further
investigation; for instance, the law of causation is


## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################

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 - We should not have it did
wę not need to have it, and we should not have
it as we have it, if we did not need it as we need
it--that is to say, if we could live otherwise.
499.
" Thinking” in a primitive (inorganic) state is to
dersevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal. -In
our thought, the essential factor is the harmonising
of the new material with the old scheines (= 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


## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
23
and harmonisation in regard to all the past in us;
they do not follow directly upon the “impression. ”
501.
6
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 of
the nutritive matter it appropriates.
Memory” late, in so far as the equalising in-
stinct appears to have been subdued: the difference
is preserved. Memory—a process of classification
and collocation; active—who?
00
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 it, as in the case of the
coming and going of a thought. Something
happens,
of which I become conscious: now some-
thing similar comes—who has called it forth?
Who has awakened it?
* The German word vergleichen, meaning “to compare,'
contains the root "equal” (gleich) which cannot be rendered
in English. —TR.


## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################

24
TIIE WILL TO POWER.
503.
CC
are
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
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.
(0
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-
1
1
1


## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################

THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
25
1
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 it, or do so only
after it has affected us exclusively for a 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 a case in point.
506.
In the beginning images-how images originate
in the mind must be explained. Then words, ap-
plied to images. Finally concepts, possible only
when there are words—the assembling of several
pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but
for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion
which the “word” generates,—that is, then, which
the view of the similar pictures generates, for which
one word is used,—this simple emotion is the
common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak
feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same,
is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a con-
fusion of two very intimately associated feelings in
the ascertainment of these feelings ;—but who is it
that ascertains ? Faith is the very first step in
every sensual impression : a sort of yea-saying is
the first intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-
to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business,
therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing-
to-be-true" arose ! What sensation lies beneath
the comment "true"?


## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################

26
THE WILL TO POWER.
507.
The valuation, “I believe that this and that is
so," is the essence of “truth. " In all valuations,
the conditions of preservation and of growth find
expression. All our organs and senses of know-
ledge have been developed only in view of the con-
ditions of preservation and growth. The trust in
reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and
also the valuation of logic, prove only that ex-
perience has taught the usefulness of these things
to life: not their “truth. ”
The pre-requisites of all living things and of
their lives is : that there should be a large amount
of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite
judgments on things, and that there should be no
doubt at all concerning all essential values. Thus
it is necessary that something should be assumed
to be true, not that it is true.
“The real world and the world of appearance"
I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We
have posited our conditions of existence as the attri-
butes of being in general. Owing to the fact that,
in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief,
we developed the idea that the real world was
neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a
world of being
C
.
(e) THE ORIGIN OF REASON AND LOGIC.
.
508.
1
Originally there was chaos among our ideas.
Those ideas which were able to stand side by side


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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
27
remained over, the greater number perished-and
are still perishing.
509.
The kingdom of desires out of which logic grew :
the gregarious instinct in the background. The
assumption of similar facts is the first condition
for “similar souls. ” For the purpose of mutual
understanding and government.
510.
Concerning the origin of logic. The fundamental
proneness to equalise things and to see them equal,
gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the
consideration of what is useful or harmful-in fact,
by considerations of success : it then becomes
adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder
way, without at the same time denying life or en-
dangering it. This whole process corresponds
entirely with that external and mechanical process
(which is its symbol) by which the protoplasm con-
tinually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what it
appropriates, and arranges it according to its own
forms and requirements.
511.
Likeness and Similarity.
1. The coarser the organ the more apparent
likenesses it sees;
2. The mind will have likeness—that is to say,
the identification of one sensual impression with
others already experienced : just as the body
assimilates inorganic matter.
i
{


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28
THE WILL TO POWER.
For the understanding of Logic:-
The will which tends to see likeness everywhere is
the will to power—the belief that something is so
and so (the essence of a judgment), is the result of a
will which would fain have it as similar as possible.
512.
Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted
that identical cases exist. As a matter of fact, before
one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, this
condition must first be assumed. That is to say, the
will to logical truth cannot be consummated before
a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has
been assumed. From which it follows that an in-
stinct rules here, which is capable of employing both
means: first, falsification; and secondly, the carrying
out of its own point of view : logic does not spring
from a will to truth.
513.
The inventive force which devised the categories,
worked in the service of our need of security, of
quick intelligibility, in the form of signs, sounds, and
abbreviations. —“ Substance," "subject,” “object,"
“ Being,” “ Becoming,” are not matters of meta-
physical truth. It was the powerful who made the
names of things into law, and, among the powerful,
it was the greatest artists in abstraction who created
the categories.
514.
A moral—that is to say, a method of living which
long experience and experiment have tested and
1
1
6
1


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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
29
.
.
proved efficient, at last enters consciousness as a law,
as dominant. . . And then the whole group of
related values and conditions become part of it:
it becomes venerable, unassailable, holy, true;
necessary part of its evolution is that its origin
should be forgotten. . . . That is a sign that it has
become master. Exactly the same thing might
have happened with the categories of reason: the
latter, after much groping and many trials, might
have proved true through relative usefulness. .
A stage was reached when they were grasped as a
whole, and when they appealed to consciousness as
a whole,—when belief in them was commanded,
that is to say, when they acted as if they com-
manded. . . . From that time forward they passed
as a priori, as beyond experience, as irrefutable.
And, possibly, they may have been the expression
of no more than a certain practicality answering
the ends of a race and a species,—their usefulness
а
alone is their “truth. ”
515.
The object is, not " to know," but to schematise,
to impose as much regularity and form upon
chaos, as our practical needs require.
In the formation of reason, logic, and the
categories, it was a need in us that was the
determining power : not the need “ to know," but
to classify, to schematise, for the purpose of
intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment
and interpretation of all similar and equal things,-
the same process, which every sensual impression


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30
THE WILL TO POWER.
as
undergoes, is the development of reason! ) No
pre-existing “idea" had anything to do with it:
but utility, which teaches us that things can be
reckoned with and managed, only when we view
them roughly as equal. . . . Finality in reason is
an effect, not a cause : Life degenerates with
every other form of reason, although constant at-
tempts are being made to attain to those other
forms of reason ;- for Life would then become
too obscure,—too unequal.
The categories are "truths ” only in the sense
that they are the conditions of our existence, just
Euclid's Space is a conditional "truth. ”
(Between ourselves, as no one will maintain that
men are absolutely necessary, reason, as well as
Euclid's Space, are seen to be but an idiosyncrasy
of one particular species of animals, one idiosyn-
crasy alone among many others. . )
The subjective constraint which prevents one
from contradicting here, is a biological constraint:
the instinct which makes us see the utility of
concluding as we do conclude, is in our blood, we
are almost this instinct . . . But what simplicity
it is to attempt to derive from this fact that we
possess an absolute truth! . . . The inability to
contradict anything is a proof of impotence but
not of “truth. ”
.
516.
We are not able to affirm and to deny one and
the same thing: that is a principle of subjective
experience—which is not in the least “necessary,”
but only a sign of inability.


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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
31
If, according to Aristotle, the principium contra-
dictionis is the most certain of all principles ; if it
is the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every
demonstration; if the principle of every other
axiom lie within it: then one should analyse
it all the more severely, in order to discover how
many assumptions already lie at its root. It either
assumes something concerning reality and Being,
as if these had become known in some other
sphere—that is to say, as if it were impossible to
ascribe the opposite attributes to it; or the proposi-
tion means: that the opposites should not be
ascribed to it. In that case, logic would be an
imperative, not directed at the knowledge of truth,
but at the adjusting and fixing of a world which
must seem true to us.
In short, the question is a debatable one: are
the axioms of logic adequate to reality, or are they
measures and means by which alone we can create
realities, or the concept "reality”? . . . In order
to affirm the first alternative, however, one would,
as we have seen, require a previous knowledge of
Being; which is certainly not the case.
position therefore contains no criterion of truth,
but an imperative concerning that which should
pass as true.
Supposing there were no such thing as A
identical with itself, as every logical and
mathematical) proposition presupposes, and that
A is in itself an appearance, then logic would
have a mere world of appearance as its first
condition. As a matter of fact, we believe in that
proposition, under the influence of an endless
The pro-


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32
THE WILL TO POWER.
<
empiricism which seems to confirm it every
minute. The “thing "—that is the real sub-
stratum of A ; our belief in things is the first
condition of our faith in logic. The A in logic
is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the
“ thing. " . . . By not understanding this, and by
making logic into a criterion of real being, we are
already on the road to the classification of all those
hypostases : substance, attribute, object, subject,
action, etc. , as realities—that is to say, the
conception of a metaphysical world or a "real
world" (this is, however, once more the world of
appearance . . . ).
The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and
negation, the holding of a thing for true, and the
holding of a thing for not true,—in so far as they
do not only presuppose a mere habit, but the very
right to postulate truth or untruth at all,—are
already dominated by a belief, that there is such a
thing as knowledge for us, and that judgments can
really hit the truth: in short, logic never doubts
that it is able to pronounce something concerning
truth in itself (that is to say, that to the thing
which is in itself true, no opposite attributes can
be ascribed).
In this belief there reigns the sensual and coarse
prejudice that our sensations teach us truths
concerning things,--that I cannot at the same
moment of time say of one and the same thing
that it is hard and soft. (The instinctive proof,
"I cannot have two opposite sensations at once,"
is quite coarse and false. )
That all contradiction in concepts should be
1


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THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE.
33
1
forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we are able
to form concepts, that a concept not only character-
ises but also holds the essence of a thing. .