guides action (but both these things are only fixed in order to agree with our metaphysico-logical dogma: they are not " facts "). We should not interpret this constraint in our selves, to imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws ("a world of identical cases ") as if we were in a position to construct a real world; but as 37 a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our existence will be ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us. The very same constraint is active in the functions of the senses which support the reason by means of simplification, coarsening, accentuation, and interpretation; whereon all " recognition," all the ability of making one s self intelligible rests. Our needs have made our senses so precise, that the " same world of appearance " always returns, and has thus acquired the semblance of reality. Our subjective constraint to have faith in logic, is expressive only of the fact that long before logic itself became conscious in us, we did nothing save introduce its postulates into the nature of things: now we find ourselves in their presence, we can no longer help it, and now we would fain believe that this constraint is a guarantee of " truth." We it was who created the " thing," the " same thing," the subject, the attribute, the action, the object, the substance, and the form, after we had carried the process of equalizing, coarsening, and simplifying as far as possible. The world seems logical to us, because we have already made it logical.
522. Fundamental solution. We believe in reason: this is, however, the philosophy of colorless concepts. Language is built upon the most naive prejudices. 38 Now we read discord and problems into things, because we are able to think only in the form of language we also believe in the " eternal truth " of " wisdom " (for instance, subject, attribute, etc.). We cease from thinking if we do not wish to think under the control of language; the most we can do is to attain to an attitude of doubt concerning the question whether the boundary here really is a boundary. Rational thought is a process of interpreting according to a scheme which we cannot reject.
(f) CONSCIOUSNESS.
(f) CONSCIOUSNESS.
523. There is no greater error than that of making psychical and physical phenomena the two faces, the two manifestations of the same substance. By this means nothing is explained: the concept "substance" is utterly useless as a means of explanation. Consciousness may be regarded as secondary, almost an indifferent and superfluous thing, prob ably destined to disappear and to be superseded by perfect automatism When we observe mental phenomena we may be likened to the deaf and dumb who divine the spoken word, which they do not hear, from the movements of the speaker s lips. From the appearance of the inner mind we draw conclusions concerning invisible and other phenomena, which we could ascertain if our powers of observation were adequate for the purpose. 39 For this inner world we have no finer organs, and that is why a complexity which is thousandfold reaches our consciousness as a simple entity, and we invent a process of causation in it, despite the fact that we can perceive no cause either of the movement or of the change the sequence of thoughts and feelings is nothing more than their becoming visible to consciousness. That this sequence has anything to do with a chain of causes is not worthy of belief: consciousness never communicates an example of cause and effect to us.
524. The part " consciousness " plays. It is essential that one should not mistake the part that " consciousness " plays: it is our relation to the outer world; it was the oulcr world that developed it. On the other hand, the direction that is to say, the care and cautiousness which is concerned with the inter-relation of the bodily functions, does not enter into our consciousness any more than does the storing activity of the intellect: that there is a superior controlling force at work in these things cannot be doubted a sort of directing committee, in which the various leading desires make their votes and their power felt. " Pleasure " and " pain " are indications which reach us from this sphere: as are also acts of will and ideas. In short: That which becomes conscious has causal relations which are completely and absolutely concealed from our knowledge the sequence ofthoughts, feelings, and ideas, in consciousness, does 40 not signify that the order in which they come is a causal order: it is so apparently, however, in the highest degree. We have based the whole of our notion of intellect, reason, logic, etc., upon this apparent truth (all these things do not exist: they are imaginary syntheses and entities), and we then projected the latter into and behind all things! As a rule copiousness itself is understood to be the general sensorium and highest ruling centre; albeit, it is only a means of communication: it was developed by intercourse, and with a view to the interests of intercourse..." Intercourse " is under stood, here, as! relation," and is intended to cover the action of the outer world upon us and our necessary response to it, as also our actual influence upon the outer world. It is not the conducting force, but an organ of the latter.
525. My principle, compressed into a formula which savors of antiquity, of Christianity, Scholasticism, and other kinds of musk: in the concept, " God is spirit! God as perfection is denied..
526. Wherever people have observed a certain unity in the grouping of things, spirit has always been regarded as the cause of this co-ordination: an assumption for which reasons are entirely lacking. Why should the idea of a complex fact be one of the conditions of that fact? Or why should 41 the notion of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause? We must be on our guard against explaining finality by the spirit: there is absolutely no reason whatever for ascribing to spirit the peculiar power of organizing and systematizing. The domain of the nervous system is much more extensive: the realm of consciousness is superadded. In the collective process of adaptation and systematizing, consciousness plays no part at all.
527. Physiologists, like philosophers, believe that consciousness increases in value in proportion as it gains in clearness: the most lucid consciousness and the most logical and impassive thought are of the first order. Meanwhile according to what standard is this value determined? In regard to the discharge of will-power the most superficial and most simple thought is the most useful it might therefore, etc. etc. (because it leaves few motives over). Precision in action is opposed to ttt far-sighted and often uncertain judgments of caution: the latter is led by the deeper instinct.
528. The chief error of psychologists: they regard the indistinct idea as of a lower kind than the distinct;but that which keeps at a distance from our consciousness and which is therefore obscure, may on 42 that very account be quite clear in itself. The fact that a thing becomes obscure is a question of the perspective of consciousness 529. The_great misapprehensions: (1) The senseless over estimation of consciousness, its elevation to the dignity of an entity: " a spirit," " a soul," something that feels, thinks, and wills; (2) The spirit regarded as a cause, especially where finality, system, and co-ordination appear; (3) Consciousness classed as the highest form attainable, as the most superior kind of being, as " God "; (4) Will introduced wherever effects are observed; (5) The "real world" regarded as the spiritual world, accessible by means of the facts of consciousness; (6) Absolute knowledge regarded as the faculty of consciousness, wherever knowledge exists at all. Consequences: Every step forward consists of a step forward in consciousness; every step backwards is a step into unconsciousness (unconsciousness was regarded as a falling-back upon the passions and senses as a state of animalism...). Man approaches reality and " real being " through dialectics: man departs from them by means of instincts, senses, and automatism...To convert man into a spirit, would mean to make a god of him: spirit, will, goodness all one. 43 All goodness must take its root in spirituality, must be a fact of consciousness. Every step made towards something better can be only a step forward in consciousness.
(g) JUDGMENT. TRUE FALSE.
530. Kant s theological bias, his unconscious dogmatism, his moral outlook, ruled, guided, and directed him. The TTpwrov -vre8o9: how is the fact knowledge possible? Is knowledge a fact at all? What is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly reply to the question, "Is there such a thing as knowledge?" Very jinel But if I do not already " know " whether there is, or can be, such a thing as knowledge, I cannot reason ably ask the question, " What is knowledge?" Kant believes in the fact of knowledge: what he requires is a piece of naivete: the knowledge of knowledge " Knowledge is judgment." But judgment is a belief that something is this or that! And not knowledge! " All knowledge consists in synthetic judgments " which have the character of being universally true (the fact is so in all cases, and does not change), and which have the character of being necessary (the reverse of the proposition cannot be imagined to exist). The validity of a belief in knowledge is always taken for granted; as is also the validity of the feelings which conscience dictates. Here moral ontology is the ruling bias. 44 The conclusion, therefore, is: (i) there are pro positions which we believe to be universally true and necessary. (2) This character of universal truth and of necessity cannot spring from experience. (3) Consequently it must base itself upon no experience at all, but upon something else; it must be derived from another source of knowledge! (Kant concludes (i) that there are some pro positions which hold good only on one condition; (2) this condition is that they do not spring from experience, but from pure reason.) Thus, the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such propositions? No, whence does our belief get its cause? But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and very limited and narrow experience frequently brings about such a belief! It already presupposes that there are not only " data a posteriori " but also " data a priori " that is to say, " previous to experience." Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience: it is therefore quite clear that it has come to us without experience at all? There is no such thing as an isolated judgment! An isolated judgment is never " true," it is never knowledge; only in connection with, and when related to, many other judgments, is a guarantee of its truth forthcoming. What is the difference between true and false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly! Necessary and universal truth cannot be given by experience! It is therefore independent of experience, of all experience! The view which comes quite a priori, and therefore independent of all experience, merely out of reason, is " pure knowledge "! " The principles of logic, the principle of identity and of contradiction, are examples of pure know ledge, because they precede all experience." But these principles are not cognitions, but regulative articles of faith. In order to establish the a priori character (the pure rationality) of mathematical axioms, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason. Hume had declared that there were no a priori synthetic judgments. Kant says there are the mathematical ones! And if there are such judgments, there may also be such things as metaphysics and a knowledge of things by means of pure reason! Mathematics is possible under conditions which are not allowed to metaphysics. All human know ledge is either experience or mathematics. A judgment is synthetic that is to say, it co ordinates various ideas. It is a priori that is to say, this co-ordination is universally true and necessary, and is arrived at, not by sensual experience, but by pure reason. If there are such things as a priori judgments, then reason must be able to co-ordinate: co-ordination is a form.
Reason must possess a formative faculty.
531. Judging is our oldest faith; it is our habit of believing this to be true or false, of asserting or denying, our certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, our belief that we really " know "- what is believed to be true in all judgments? What are attributes * We did not regard changes in ourselves merely as such, but as " things in themselves," which are strange to us, and which we only " perceive "; and we did not class them as phenomena, but as Being, as " attributes "; and in addition we invented a creature to which they attach themselves that is to say, we made the effect the working cause, and the latter we made Being. But even in this plain statement, the concept " effect " is arbitrary: for in regard to those changes which occur in us, and of which we are convinced we ourselves are not the cause, we still argue that they must be effects: and this is in accordance with the belief that " every change must have its author "; but this belief in itself is already mythology; for it separates the working cause from the cause in work. When I say the " lightning flashes," I set the flash down, once as an action and a second time as a subject acting; and thus a thing is fancifully affixed to a phenomenon, which is not one with it, but which is stable, which is, and does not "come." To make the phenomenon the working cause, and to make the effect into a thing into Being: this is the double error, or interpretation of which we are guilty.
532. The Judgment that is the faith: "This and p this is so." In every judgment, therefore, there lies the admission that an " identical case " has been met with: it thus takes some sort of comparison for granted, with the help of the memory. Judgment does not create the idea that an identical case seems to be there. It believes rather that it actually perceives such a case; it works on the hypothesis that there are such things as identical cases. But what is that much older function called, which must have been active much earlier, and which in itself equalizes unequal cases and makes them alike? What is that second function called, which with this first one as a basis, etc. etc. " That which provokes the same sensations as another thing is equal to that other thing ": but what is that called which makes sensations equal, which regards them as equal? There could be no judgments if a sort of equalizing process were not active within all sensations: memory is only possible by means of the underscoring of all that has already been experienced and learned. Before a judgment can be formed, the process of assimilation must already have been completed-, thus, even here, an intellectual activity is to be observed which does not enter consciousness in at all the same way as the pain which accompanies a wound. Probably the 1 psychic phenomena correspond to all the organic functions that is to say, they consist of assimilation, rejection, growth, etc. The essential thing is to start out from the body and to use it as the general clue. It is by far the richer phenomenon, and allows of much more accur ate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit. r? 48 " However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth." But what is truth? Perhaps it is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then strength would certainly be a criterion; for in stance, in regard to causality.
533. Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth (" omne illud verum est, quod dare et distincte percipitur? Descartes): by this means the mechanical hypothesis of the world becomes desirable and credible. But this is gross confusion: like simplex sigillum f veri. Whence comes the knowledge that the real nature of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could it not be otherwise? Could it j not be this, that the hypothesis which gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security, is preferred valued, and marked as true. The intellect sets its freest and strongest faculty and ability as the criterion of what is most valuable, consequently of what is true...* " True " from the standpoint of sentiment is that which most provokes sentiment (" I "); from the standpoint of thought is that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength; from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing is that which calls forth the greatest resistance. $1 Thus it is the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its " reality." The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there is something which is being resisted.
534. The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
535. According to my way of thinking, " truth " does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas other errors might not tyrannize over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other " tyrants," could even be laid aside and " refuted." Why should an irrefutable assumption necessarily be " true "? This question may exasperate the logicians who limit things according to the limitations they find in themselves: but I have long since declared war with this logician s optimism.
536. Everything simple is simply imaginary, but not "true." That which is real and true is, however, neither a unity nor reducible to a unity.
537. What is truth f Inertia; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intellectual strength, etc.
538. First proposition. The easier way of thinking * always triumphs over the more difficult way; dogmatically: simplex sigillum veri. Dico: to sup pose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute childishness...Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of things, and of all those constant entities, is a hundred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution...Third proposition. Logic was intended to be a method ot facilitating thought: a means of expression, not truth...Later on it got to act like truth...539. Parmenides said: " One can form no concept of the non-existent "; we are at the other extreme, and say, " That of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional."
540. There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes therefore there must be many kinds of " truths," and consequently there can be no truth. $1 541. Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum. "That which is necessarily true in thought must be necessarily true in morality." HERBERT SPENCER. " The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negation." HERBERT SPENCER.
542. If the character of existence were false, and this would be possible, what would truth then be, all our truth?...An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness?...543. In a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a higher degree of falsity. For a world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created (it being understood that he must believe himself to be " truthful "). Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to him self, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such a man conceives a world of Being as " God" in His own image. In order that truthfulness may be possible, the 52 whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable: the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one. Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
544. " Dissimulation " increases in accordance with the rising order of rank among organic beings. In the inorganic world it seems to be entirely absent. There power opposes power quite roughly ruse begins in the organic world; plants are already masters of it. The greatest men, such as Caesar and Napoleon (see Stendhal s remark concerning him),* as also the higher races (the Italians), the Greeks (Odysseus); the most supreme cunning, belongs to the very essence of the elevation of man...The problem of the actor. My Dionysian ideal...The optics of all the organic functions, of all the strongest vital instincts: the power which will have error in all life; error as the very first principle of thought itself. Before " thought " is possible, " fancy " must first have done its work; the picturing of identical cases, of the seemingness of identity, is more primeval than the cognition of identity. * The reference to Stendhal here, seems to point to a passage in his Life of Napoleon (Preface, p. xv) of which Nietzsche had made a note in another place, and which reads: " Une croyance presque instinctive chez moi c est que tout homme puissant ment quand il parle et a plus forte vaison quand il ecrit." 53 () AGAINST CAUSALITY.
545. I believe in absolute space as the basis of force, and I believe the latter to be limited and formed. Time, eternal. But space and time as things in themselves do not exist. " Changes " are only appearances (or mere processes of our senses to us); if we set recurrence, however regular, between them, nothing is proved beyond the fact that it has always happened so. The feeling that post hoc is propter hoc is easily explained as the result of a misunderstanding; it is comprehensible. But appearances cannot be " causes "!
546. The interpretation of a phenomenon, either as an action or as the endurance of an action (that is to say, every action involves the suffering of it), amounts to this: every change, every differentiation, presupposes the existence of an agent and somebody acted upon, who is " altered."
547. Psychological history of the concept "subject" The body, the thing, the " whole," which is visualized by the eye, awakens the thought of distinguishing between an action and an agent; the idea that the agent is the cause of the action, after having been repeatedly refined, at length left the " subject " over. * 54 548. Our absurd habit of regarding a mere mnemonic sign or abbreviated formula as an independent being, and ultimately as a cause; as, for instance, when we say of lightning that " it flashes." Or even the little word " I." A sort of double-sight in seeing which makes sight a cause of seeing in itself: this was the feat in the invention of the " subject " of the " ego."
549. " Subject," " object," " attribute " these distinctions have been made, and are now used like schemes to cover all apparent facts. The false fundamental observation is this, that I believe it is I who does something, who suffers something, who " has " something, who " has " a quality, 550. In every judgment lies the whole faith in sub ject, attribute, or cause and effect (in the form of an assumption that every effect is the result of activity, and that all activity presupposes an agent); and even this last belief is only an isolated case of the first, so that faith remains as the most fundamental belief: there are such things as subjects, everything that happens is related attributively to a subject of some sort. I notice something, and try to discover the reason of it: originally this was, I look for an intention behind it, and, above all, I look for one who has an intention, for a subject, an agent: 55 every phenomenon is an action, formerly intentions were seen behind all phenomena, this is our oldest habit. Has the animal also this habit? As a living organism, is it not also compelled to interpret things through itself. The question " why? " is always a question concerning the causa finalis, and the general " purpose " of things. We have no sign of the " sense of the efficient cause "; in this respect Hume is quite right, habit (but not only that of the individual) allows us to expect that a certain process, frequently observed, will follow upon another, but nothing more! That which gives us such an extraordinarily firm faith in causality, is not the rough habit of observing the sequence of processes; but our inability to interpret a phenomenon otherwise than as the result of de sign. It is the belief in living and thinking things, as the only agents of causation; it is the belief in will, in design the belief that all phenomena are actions, and that all actions presuppose an agent; it is the belief in the " subject." Is not this belief in the concepts subject and object an arrant absurdity? Question: Is the design the cause of a phenomenon? Or is that also illusion? Is it not the phenomenon itself?
551. A criticism of the concept "cause" We have absolutely no experience concerning cause; viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that we ourselves are causes that is to say, that the arm moves...But that is an error. We distinguish ourselves, the agents, from the action, and everywhere we make use of this scheme we try to discover an agent behind every phenomenon. What have we done? We have misunderstood a feeling of power, tension, j resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the j beginning of the action, and posited it as a cause; or we have understood the will to do this or that, as a cause, because the action follows it. There is no such thing as " Cause," in those few cases in which it seemed to be given, and in which we projected it out of ourselves in order to understand a phenomenon it has been shown to be an illusion. Our understanding of a phenomenon consisted in our inventing a subject who was responsible for something happening, and for the manner in which it happened. In our concept " cause " we have em braced our feeling of will, our feeling of " freedom," our feeling of responsibility and our design to do an action: causa efficiens and causa finalis are fundamentally one. We believed that an effect was explained when we could point to a state in which it was inherent. As a matter of fact, we invent all causes according to the scheme of the effect: the latter is known to us. e.. On the other hand, we are not in a position to say of any particular thing how it will " act." The thing, the subject the will, the design all inherent in the conception " cause." We try to discover things in order to explain why something has changed. Even the " atom " is one of these fanciful inventions like the " thing " and the " primitive subject."...57 At last we understand that things consequently, also atoms effect nothing: because they are non-existent and that the concept causality is quite useless. Out of a necessary sequence of states, the latter s causal relationship does not follow (that would be equivalent to extending their active principle from I to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). Th$f& j$ no suck tiling as a cause or an effect. From the standpoint of language we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not matter. If I imagine muscle separated from its " effects," I have denied it...In short: a phenomenon is neither effected norcapable of effecting. Causa is a faculty to effect j something superadded fancifully to what hap- | pens...The interpretation of causality is an illusion...A " thing " is the sum of its effects, synthetically united by means of a concept, an image. As a matter of fact, science has robbed the concept causality of all meaning, and has reserved it merely as an allegorical formula, which has made it a matter of indifference whether cause or effect be put on this side or on that. It is asserted that in two complex states (centres of force) the quantities of energy remain constant. The calculability of a phenomenon does not lie in the fact that a rule is observed, or that a neces sity is obeyed, or that we have projected a law of causality into every phenomenon: it lies in the recurrence of " identical cases" There is no such thing as a sense of causality, as Kant would have us believe. We are aghast, 58 we feel insecure, we will have something familiar, which can be relied upon...As soon as we are shown the existence of something old in a new thing, we are pacified. The so-called instinct of causality is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar y and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known. It is not a search [for causes, but for the familiar.
552. To combat determinism and teleology. From the fact that something happens regularly, and that its occurrence may be reckoned upon, it does not follow that it happens necessarily. If a quantity of force determines and conducts itself in a certain way in every particular case, it does not prove that it has " no free will." is not an established fact: it was we who first read it into the nature of all phenomena. We interpreted the possibility of formularising pheno mena as a result of the dominion of necessary law over all existence. But it does not follow, because I do a determined thing, that I am bound to do it. Compulsion cannot be demonstrated in things: all that the rule proves is this, that one and the same phenomenon is not another phenomenon. Owing to the very fact that we fancied the existence of subjects " agents " in things, the notion arose that all phenomena are the consequence of a compulsory force exercised over the subject exercised by whom? once more by an " agent." The concept " Cause and Effect " is a dangerous one, 59 so long as people believe in something that causes, and a something that is caused. (a) Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. # () When it is understood that the " subject " is nothing that acts, but only a thing of fancy, there is much that follows. Only with the subject as model we invented thingness and read it into the pell-mell of sensations. If we cease from believing in the acting subject, the belief in acting things, in reciprocal action, in cause and effect between phenomena which we call things, also falls to pieces. In this case the world of acting atoms also disappears: for this world is always assumed to exist on the pre-determined grounds that subjects are necessary. Ultimately, of course, " the thing-in-itself" also disappears: for at bottom it is the conception of a " subject-in-itself." But we have seen that the subject is an imaginary thing. The antithesis " thing-in-itself " and "appearance" is untenable; but in this way the concept " appearance " also disappears. (c) If we abandon the idea of the acting subject, i we also abandon the object acted upon. Duration, I equality to self, Being, are inherent neither in what is called subject, nor in what is called object: they are complex phenomena, and in regard to other phenomena are apparently durable they are 60 distinguishable, for instance, by the different tempo with which they happen (repose movement, fixed loose: all antitheses which do not exist in them selves and by means of which differences of degree only are expressed; from a certain limited point of view, though, they seem to be antitheses. There are no such things as