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, regularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalized)...Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It is therefore obvious that it increases with each advance of power..., 12 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 interpretations. We cannot establish any fact " in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. " Everything is subjective" ye say: but that in it self is interpretation. The " subject " is nothing given, but something superimposed by fancy, some- 13 thing introduced behind. Is it necessary to set an f 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 instincts 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 f 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 customary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imaginary 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 argument 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 formulation 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 C concept subject, and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, "the subject, the very conditions for the concept " substance " are lacking. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost. 1C 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," " substantiality." " 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 similising 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 criticize itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even de-: fine itself! 16, 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 17 the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity 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 organize 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 I. B 1 8 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 accustomed 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 inferred 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 commanding 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 19 the unscientific observation of the agonies of the body. (Something which leaves it. The belief in the truth of dreams?)
492. The body and physiology the starting-point: why? 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 dependence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of a hierarchy, and of the division of labor, 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 continually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the " subject "; we realize that the struggle finds expression in obeying as well as in commanding, and that a fluctuating 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 valuation even of want-of-knowledge, of seeing-things- generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsification, and of perspective. What is most important, however, is, that we regard the ruler and his subjects 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 2O co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Movement as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought. The danger of directly questioning the subject concerning the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection, consists in this, that it might be a necessary condition 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-preservation. 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 refuted, the sense for truth will then have to justify 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 cognizance 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 excessively 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. strongly credited a priori " truths " are, to my mind, mere assumptions pending further investigation; for instance, the law of causation is ) 22 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 conclusion! 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 we 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 Persevere in forms, as in the case of the crystal. In thought, the essential factor is the harmonizing of the new material with the old schemes ( = Procrustes' 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 equalizing and ordering power which rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorporation of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the result of this process of adaptation 23 and harmonization in regard to all the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the " impression."
501. All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of comparing? has as a first condition the act of equalizing, 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 equalizing instinct appears to have been subdued: the difference is preserved. Memory a process of classification and collocation; active who?
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, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognizes again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live " in the memory "; I have nothing 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. 24 503. The whole apparatus of knowledge is an abstracting- and simplifying apparatus not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things: " end " and " means " are as remote from the essence of this apparatus as " concepts " are. By the " end " and the " means " a process is appropriated ( a process is invented which may be grasped), but by " concepts " one appropriates the " things " which constitute the process.
504. Consciousness begins outwardly as co-ordination and knowledge of impressions, 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 consciousness 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 f 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- 25 permeated by valuations (useful or harmful consequently, pleasant or painful). Every particular color, besides being a color, 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 jail or lunatics). In sects likewise react in different ways to different colors: 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, applied 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"?
507. The valuation, " I believe that this and so, *~ls~"tlu. -: of "tiuLi. 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 conditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that experience 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 attributes 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.
(e) THE ORIGIN OF REASON AND LOGIC.
508. Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished and are still perishing.
509. "* The kingdom of desires out of which I!. the gregarious instinct in the background. * " - r - -i r 4.U assumption of similar facts is the first c. for " similar souls." For the purpose of., understanding and government.., 510. Concerning the origin of logic. The fundamental proneness to equalize 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 endangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which the protoplasm continually 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. 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 willnwhich 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 instinct 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 metaphysical 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 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; a 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 commanded...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 alone is their " truth." - 515. The object is, not " to know," but to schematize 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 schematize, for the purpose of|! intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment and interpretation of all similar and equal things, the same process, which every sensual impression 30 [ undergoes, is the development of reason!) No I pre-existing "idea" had anything to do with it: j 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 our. existence, just as 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 idiosyncrasy 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. If, according to Aristotle, the principium contradiction 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 analyze 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 proposition 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. The pro 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 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 tiling 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 33 forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we are able to form concepts, that a concept not only characterizes but also holds the essence of a thing...As a matter of fact, logic (like geometry and arithmetic) only holds good of assumed existences which we have created. Logic is the attempt on our part to under- stand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation, for our own purposes...-.
517. In order to be able to think and to draw conclusions, it is necessary to acknowledge that which exists: logic only deals with formulae for things which are constant. That is why this acknowledgment would not in the least prove reality: " that which is " is part of our optics. The " ego " regarded as Being (not affected by either Becoming or evolution). The assumed world of subject, substance, " reason," etc., is necessary: an adjusting, simplifying, falsifying, artificially-separating power resides in us. " Truth " is the will to be master over the? manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is I the will to classify phenomena according to definite I categories. In this way we start out with a belief 1 in the " true nature " of things (we regard j phenomena as real). The character of the world in the process of Becoming is not susceptible of formulation; it is " false " and " contradicts itself." Knowledge and I. C 34 the process of evolution exclude each other. Consequently, knowledge must be something else: it must be preceded by a will to make things knowable, a kind of Becoming in itself must create the illusion of Being.
518. If our " ego " is the only form of Being, according to which we make and understand all Being: very good! In that case it were very proper to doubt whether an illusion of perspective were not active here the apparent unity which every thing assumes in our eyes on the horizon-line. Appealing to the body for our guidance, we are confronted by such appalling manifoldness, that for the sake of method it is allowable to use that phenomenon which is richer and more easily studied as a clue to the understanding of the poorer phenomenon. (Finally: admitting that all is Becoming, know ledge is only possible when based on a belief in Being.
519. If there is " only one form of Being, the ego," and all other forms of Being are made in its own image, if, in short, the belief in the " ego," together with the belief in logic, stands and falls with the metaphysical truth of the categories of reason: if, in addition, the " ego " is shown to be something that is evolving: then 35 520. The continual transitions that occur, forbid our speaking of the "individual," etc.; the "number" of beings itself fluctuates. We should know no thing of time or of movement, if, in a rough way, we did not believe we saw things " standing still: behind or in front of things moving. We should also know just as little about cause and effect, and without the erroneous idea of " empty space " we should never have arrived at the concept of space at all. The principle of identity is based on the " fact of appearance " that there are some things alike. Strictly speaking, it would not be possible to " understand " and " know " an evolving world; something which is called " knowledge " exists only in so far as the " understanding " and " knowing " intellect already finds an adjusted and rough world to hand, fashioned out of a host? of mere appearances, but become fixed to the extent in which this kind of appearance has helped; to preserve life; only to this extent is " knowledge " j, possible that is to say, as a measuring of earlier j and more recent errors by one another.
521. Concerning "logical appearance The concept " individual " and the concept " species " are equally false and only apparent. " Species " only expresses the fact that an abundance of similar creatures come forth at the same time, and that the speed of their further growth and of their 36 further transformation has been made almost imperceptible for a long time: so that the actual and trivial changes and increase of growth are of no account at all ( a stage of evolution in which the process of evolving is not visible, so that, not only does a state of equilibrium seem to have been reached, but the road is also made clear for the error of supposing that an actual goal has been reached and that evolution had a goal...)- The form seems to be something enduring, and therefore valuable; but the form was invented merely by ourselves; and however often " the same form is attained," it does not signify that it is the same form, because something new always appears; and we alone, who compare, reckon the new with the old, in so far as it resembles the latter, and embody the two in the unity of " form." As if a type had to be reached and were actually intended by the formative processes. Form, species, law, idea, purpose the same fault is made in respect of all these concepts, namely, that of giving a false realism to a piece of fiction: as if all phenomena were infused with some sort of obedient spirit an artificial distinction is here made between that which acts and that which