453. The causes of error lie just as much in the good as in the bad will of man: in an incalculable number of cases he conceals reality from himself, he falsifies it, so that he may not suffer from his good or bad will. God, for instance, is considered the shaper of man s destiny; he interprets his little lot as though everything were intentionally sent to him for the salvation of his soul, this act of ignorance in " philology," which to a more subtle intellect would seem unclean and false, is done, in the majority of cases, with perfect good faith. Goodwill, " noble feelings," and " lofty states of the soul " are just as underhand and deceptive in the means they use as are the passions love, hatred, and revenge, which morality has repudiated and declared to be egotistic. Errors are what mankind has had to pay for most dearly: and taking them all in all, the errors which have resulted from goodwill are those which have wrought the most harm. The illusion which makes people happy is more harmful than the illusion which is immediately followed by evil results: the latter increases keenness and mistrust, and purifies the understanding; the former merely narcoticises...Fine feelings and noble impulses ought, speak ing physiologically, to be classified with the narcotics: their abuse is followed by precisely the same results as the abuse of any other opiate weak nerves.
454. Error is the most expensive luxury that man can indulge in: and if the error happen to be a physiological one, it is fatal to life. What has mankind paid for most dearly hitherto? For its " truths ": for every one of these were errors in physiologicis,...
455. Psychological confusions: the desire for belief is confounded with the " will to truth " (for instance, in Carlyle). But the desire for disbelief has also been confounded with the " will to truth " (a need of ridding one s self of a belief for a hundred reasons: in order to carry one s point against certain " believers "). What is it that inspires Sceptics? The hatred of dogmatists or a need of repose, weariness as in Pyrrho s case. The advantages which were expected to come from truth, were the advantages resulting from a belief in it: for, in itself, truth could have been 73 thoroughly painful, harmful, and even fatal. Likewise truth was combated only on account of the advantages which a victory over it would provide for instance, emancipation from the yoke of the ruling powers. The method of truth was not based upon motives of truthfulness, but upon motives of power; upon the. desire to be superior. How is truth proved"? By means of the feeling of increased power, by means of utility, by means of indispensability, in short, by means of its advantages (that is to say, hypotheses concerning what truth should be like in order that it may be embraced by us). But this involves prejudice: it is a sign that truth does not enter the question at all...What is the meaning of the " will to truth," for instance in the Goncourts? and in the naturalists? A criticism of " objectivity." Why should we know: why should we not prefer to be deceived?...But what was needed was always belief and not truth...Belief is created by means which are quite opposed to the method of investigation: it even depends upon the exclusion of the latter.
456. A certain degree of faith suffices today to give us an objection to what is believed it does more, it makes us question the spiritual healthi ness of the believer. 374 457. Martyrs. To combat anything that is based upon reverence, opponents must be possessed of both daring and recklessness, and be hindered by no scruples...Now, if one considers that for thousands of years man has sanctified as truths only those things which were in reality errors, and that he has branded any criticism of them with the hall-mark of badness, one will have to acknowledge, however reluctantly, that a goodly amount of immoral deeds were necessary in order to give the initiative to an attack I mean to reason...That these immoralists have always posed as the " martyrs of truth " should be forgiven them: the truth of the matter is that they did not stand up and deny owing to an instinct for truth; but because of a love of dis solution, criminal scepticism, and the love of adventure. In other cases it is personal rancour which drives them into the province of problems they only combat certain points of view in order to be able to carry their point against certain people. But, above all, it is revenge which has become scientifically useful the revenge of the oppressed, those who, thanks to the truth that happens to be ruling, have been pressed aside and even smothered...Truth, that is to say the scientific method, was grasped and favoured by such as recognized that it was a useful weapon of war an instru ment of destruction...In order to be honored as opponents, they 75 were moreover obliged to use an apparatus similar to that used by those whom they were attacking: they therefore brandished the concept " truth " as absolutely as their adversaries did they became fanatics at least in their poses, because no other pose could be expected to be taken seriously. What still remained to be done was left to persecution, to passion, and the un certainty of the persecuted hatred waxed great, and the first impulse began to die away and to leave the field entirely to science. Ultimately all of them wanted to be right in the same absurd way as their opponents...The word " con viction," " faith," the pride of martyrdom these things are most unfavourable to knowledge. The adversaries of truth finally adopt the whole subjective manner of deciding about truth, that is to say, by means of poses, sacrifices, and heroic resolutions, and thus prolong the dominion of the anti-scientific method. As martyrs they com promise their very own deed.
458. The dangerous distinction between " theoretical " and "practical" in Kant for instance, but also in the ancient philosophers: they behave as if pure intellectuality presented them with the prob lems of science and metaphysics; they behave as if practice should be judged by a measure of its own, whatever the judgment of theory may be. Against the first tendency I set up my psychology of philosophers: their strangest calcula tions and "intellectuality" are still but the last pallid impress of a physiological fact; spontaneity is absolutely lacking in them, everything is instinct, everything is intended to follow a certain direction from the first...Against the second tendency I put my question: whether we know another method of acting correctly, besides that of thinking correctly; the last case is action, the first presupposes thought Are we possessed of a means whereby we can judge of the value of a method of life differently from the value of a theory: through induction or comparison?...Guileless people imagine that in this respect we are better equipped, we know what is " good" and the philosophers are content to repeat this view. We conclude that some sort of faith is at work in this matter, and nothing more..." Men must act; consequently rules of conduct are necessary " this is what even the ancient Sceptics thought. The urgent need of a definite decision in this department of knowledge is used as an argument in favour of regarding something as true!.
.." Men must not act " said their more con sistent brothers, the Buddhists, and then thought out a mode of conduct which would deliver man from the yoke of action...To adapt one s self, to live as the " common man " lives, and to regard as right and proper what he regards as right: this is submission to the gregarious instinct. One must carry one s courage 77 and severity so far as to learn to consider such submission a disgrace. One should not live according to two standards!...One should not separate theory and practice!...
459. Of all that which was formerly held to be true, not one word is to be credited. Everything which was formerly disdained as unholy, for bidden, contemptible, and fatal all these flowers now bloom on the most charming paths of truth. The whole of this old morality concerns us no longer: it contains not one idea which is still worthy of respect. We have outlived it we are no longer sufficiently coarse and guileless to be forced to allow ourselves to be lied to in this way...In more polite language: we are too virtuous for it...And if truth in the old sense were " true " only because the old morality said " yea " to it, and had a right to say " yea " to it: it follows that no truth of the past can any longer be of use to us...Our criterion of truth is certainly not morality: we reftite an assertion when we show that it is dependent upon morality and is inspired by noble feelings.
460. All these values are empirical and conditioned. But he who believes in them and who honors them, refuses to acknowledge this aspect of them. All philosophers believe in these values, and one form their reverence takes is the endeavour to make a priori truths out of them. The falsifying nature of reverence...Reverence is the supreme test of intellectual honesty: but in the whole history of philosophy there is no such thing as intellectual honesty, but the " love of goodness..." On the one hand, there is an absolute lack of method in testing the value of these values; secondly, there is a general disinclination either to test them or to regard them as conditioned at all. All anti-scientific instincts assembled round moral values in order to keep science out of this department...4. CONCLUDING REMARKS 461. Why philosophers are slanderers. The artful and blind hostility of philosophers towards the senses what an amount of mob and middle-class qualities lie in all this hatred! The crowd always believes that an abuse of which it feels the harmful results, constitutes an objection to the thing which happens to be abused: all insurrectionary movements against principles, whether in politics or agriculture, always follow a line of argument suggested by this ulterior motive: the abuse must be shown to be necessary to, and inherent in, the principle.. 79 It is a woeful history: mankind looks for a principle, from the standpoint of which he will be able to contemn man he invents a world in order to be able to slander and throw mud at this world: as a matter of fact, he snatches every time at nothing, and construes this nothing as " God," as " Truth," and, in any case, as judge and detractor of this existence...If one should require a proof of how deeply and thoroughly the actually barbarous needs of man, even in his present state of tameness and " civilisation," still seek gratification, one should contemplate the " leitmotifs " of the whole of the evolution of philosophy: a sort of revenge upon reality, a surreptitious process of destroying the values by means of which men live, a dissatisfied soul to which the conditions of discipline is one of torture, and which takes a particular pleasure in morbidly severing all the bonds that bind it to such a condition. The history of philosophy is the story of a secret and mad hatred of the prerequisities of Life, of the feelings which make for the real values of Life, and of all partisanship in favour of Life. Philosophers have never hesitated to affirm a fanciful world, provided it contradicted this world, and furnished them with a weapon wherewith they could calumniate this world. Up to the present, philosophy has been the grand school of slander: and its power has been so great, that even today our science, which pretends to be the advocate of Life, has accepted the fundamental position of slander, and treats this world as 380 " appearance," and this chain of causes as though it were only phenomenal. What is the hatred which is active here? I fear that it is still the Circe of philosophers Morality, which plays them the trick of compelling them to be ever slanderers...They believed in moral " truths," in these they thought they had found the highest values; what alternative had they left, save that of denying existence ever more emphatically the more they got to know about it?...For this life is immoral...And it is based upon immoral first principles: and morality says nay to Life. Let us suppress the real world: and in order to do this, we must first suppress the highest values current hitherto morals...It is enough to show that morality itself is immoral, in the same sense as that in which immorality has been condemned heretofore. If an end be thus made to the tyranny of the former values, if we have suppressed the " real world," a new order of values must follow of its own accord. The world of appearance and the world of lies: this constitutes the contradiction. The latter hitherto has been the " real world," " truth," " God." This is the one which we still have to suppress. The logic of my conception: (1) Morality as the highest value (it is master of all the phases of philosophy, even of the Sceptics). Result: this world is no good, it is not the " real world." (2) What is it that determines the highest value here? What, in sooth, is morality? It is 81 the instinct of decadence; it is the means whereby the exhausted and the degenerate revenge them selves. Historical proof: philosophers have always been decadents...in the service of nihilistic religions. (3) It is the instinct of decadence coming to the fore as will to power. Proof: the absolute immorality of the means employed by morality throughout its history. General aspect: the values which have been highest hitherto constitute a specific case of the will to power; morality itself is a specific case of immorality.
462. The principal innovations: Instead of " moral values," nothing but naturalistic values. Natural isation of morality. In the place of " sociology," a doctrine of the forms of dominion. In the place of " society," the complex whole of culture which is my chief interest (whether in its entirety or in parts). In the place of the " theory of knowledge," a doctrine which laid down tJie value of the passions (to this a hierarchy of the passions would belong: the passions transfigured-, their superior rank, their " spirituality "). In the place of " metaphysics " and religion, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence (this being regarded as a means to the breeding and selection of men).
463. My precursors: Schopenhauer. To what extent I deepened pessimism, and first brought its full meaning within my grasp, by means of its most extreme opposite. Likewise: the higher Europeans, the pioneers of great politics. Likewise: the Greeks and their genesis.
464. I have named those who were unconsciously my workers and precursors. But in what direc tion may I turn with any hope of finding my particular kind of philosophers themselves, or at least my yearning for new philosophers! In that direction, alone, where a noble attitude of mind prevails, an attitude of mind which believes in slavery and in manifold orders of rank, as the pre requisites of any high degree of culture. In that direction, alone, where a creative attitude of mind prevails, an attitude of mind which does not re gard the world of happiness and repose, the " Sabbath of Sabbaths " as an end to be desired, and which, even in peace, honors the means which lead to new wars; an attitude of mind which would prescribe laws for the future, which for the sake of the future would treat everything that exists today with harshness and even tyranny; a daring and " immoral " attitude of mind, which would wish to see both the good and the evil qualities in man developed to their fullest extent, because it would feel itself able to put each in its right place that is to say, in that place in which each would need the other. But what prospect has he of finding what he seeks, who goes in search of philosophers today? Is it not probable that, even with the best Diogenes-lantern in his hand, he will wander about by night and day in vain? This age is possessed of the opposite in stincts. What it wants, above all, is comfort; secondly, it wants publicity and the deafening din of actors voices, the big drum which appeals to its Bank-Holiday tastes; thirdly, that every one should lie on his belly in utter subjection before the greatest of all lies which is " the equality of men " and should honor only those virtues which make men equal and place them in equal positions. But in this way, the rise of the philo sopher, as I understand him, is made completely impossible despite the fact that many may re gard the present tendencies as rather favourable to his advent. As a matter of fact, the whole world mourns, today, the hard times that philo sophers used to have, hemmed in between the fear of the stake, a guilty conscience, and the presump tuous wisdom of the Fathers of the Church: but the truth is, that precisely these conditions were ever so much more favourable to the education of a mighty, extensive, subtle, rash, and daring intellect than the conditions prevailing today. At present another kind of intellect, the intellect of the demagogue, of the actor, and perhaps of the beaver- and ant-like scholar too, finds the best possible conditions for its development But even for artists of a superior calibre the conditions are already far from favourable: for does not every one of them, almost, perish owing to his want of discipline? They are no longer tyrannised over by an outside power by the tables of absolute values enforced by a Church or by a monarch: and thus they no longer learn to de velop their " inner tyrant," their will. And what holds good of artists also holds good, to a greater and more fatal degree, of philosophers. Where, then, are free spirits to be found today? Let any one show me a free spirit today!
465. Under " Spiritual freedom " I understand some thing very definite: it is a state in which one is a hundred times superior to philosophers and other disciples of " truth " in one s severity towards one s self, in one s uprightness, in one s courage, and in one s absolute will to say nay even when it is dangerous to say nay. I regard the philosophers that have appeared heretofore as contemptible libertines hiding behind the petticoats of the female " Truth."
THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION.
I. THE WILL TO POWER IN SCIENCE (a) THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION.
466. THE distinguishing feature of our nineteenth century is not the triumph of science, but the triumph of the scientific method over science.
467. The history of scientific methods was regarded by Auguste Comte almost as philosophy itself.
468. The great Methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste Comte.
469. The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods. 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 pathos 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 picturesque 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 of pathos which at last became incarnate in the scientific man...Conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, was a preparatory school for the scientific character, as was also, in a very pre-eminent sense, the attitude of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of what personal advantage he may derive from them.
(b) THE STARTING-POINT OF EPISTEMOLOGY.
470. 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 relinquish the stimulus residing in the enigmatical.
471. The hypothesis that, at bottom, things proceed in such a moral fashion that human reason must be right, is a mere piece of good-natured and simple-minded trustfulness, the result of the belief in Divine truthfulness God regarded as the Creator of all things. These concepts are our in heritance from a former existence in a Beyond.
472. The contradiction of the so-called "facts of consciousness." Observation a thousand times more difficult, error is perhaps the absolute condition of observation.
473. The intellect cannot criticize 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 criticize the intellect, we should have to be higher 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.”
477. I am convinced of the phenomenalism of the inner world also: everything that reaches our consciousness is utterly and completely adjusted, simplified, schematized, 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 never come across a single "fact": pleasure and pain are more 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 recognize 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 introspection, which believes in "thinking": in the first 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, 01, 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 accustomed to the prejudice that thoughts are the *l 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 f would have proceeded in exactly the same way,according to precisely the same sequence of cause 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!...7 479. 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. 10 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 good 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 interpretation 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-centers, 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 interpretations, 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. II 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 01" 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 discovered 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...