Part 11

It is a matter of mere experience that change never ceases: at bottom we have not the smallest grounds for assuming that any one particular change must follow upon any other. On the contrary, any state which has been attained would seem almost forced to maintain itself intact if it had not within itself a capacity for not desiring to maintain itself.... Spinoza's proposition concerning "self-preservation" ought as a matter of fact to put a stop to change. But the proposition is false; the contrary is true. In all living organisms it can be clearly shown that they do everything not to remain as they are, but to become greater....

689.

_"Will to power" and causality._--From a psychological point of view the idea of "cause" is our feeling of power in the act which is called willing--our concept effect is the superstition that this feeling of power is itself the force which moves things....

A state which accompanies an event and is already an effect of that event is deemed "sufficient cause" of the latter; the tense relationship of our feeling of power (pleasure as the feeling of power) and of an obstacle being overcome--are these things illusions?

If we translate the notion "cause" back into the only sphere which is known to us, and out of which we have taken it, we cannot imagine _any change_ in which the will to power is not inherent. We do not know how to account for any change which is not a _trespassing_ of one power on another.

Mechanics only show us the results, and then only in images (movement is a figure of speech); gravitation itself has no mechanical cause, because it is itself the first cause of mechanical results.

The will to _accumulate force_ is confined to the phenomenon of life, to nourishment, to procreation, to inheritance, to society, states, customs, authority. Should we not be allowed to assume that this will is the motive power also of chemistry?--and of the cosmic order?

Not only conservation of energy, but the minimum amount of waste; so that the only reality is this: _the will of every centre of power to become stronger_--not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate, to become master, to become more, to become stronger.

Is the fact that science is possible a proof of the principle of causation--"From like causes, like effects"--"A permanent law of things"--"Invariable order"? Because something is calculable, is it therefore on that account necessary?

If something happens thus, and thus only, it is not the manifestation of a "principle," of a "law," of "order." What happens is that certain quanta of power begin to operate, and their essence is to exercise their power over all other quanta of power. Can we assume the existence of a striving after power without a feeling of pleasure and pain, _i.e._ without the sensation of an increase or a decrease of power? Is mechanism only a language of signs for the concealed fact of a world of fighting and conquering quanta of will-power? All mechanical first-principles, matter, atoms, weight, pressure, and repulsion, are not facts in themselves, but interpretations arrived at with the help of psychical fictions.

Life, which is our best known form of being, is altogether "will to the accumulation of strength"--all the processes of life hinge on this: everything aims, not at preservation, but at accretion and accumulation. Life as an individual case (a hypothesis which may be applied to existence in general) strives after the maximum feeling of power; life is essentially a striving after more power; striving itself is only a straining after more power; the most fundamental and innermost thing of all is this will. (Mechanism is merely the semeiotics of the results.)

690.

The thing which is the cause of the existence of development cannot in the course of investigation be found above development; it should neither be regarded as "evolving" nor as evolved ... the "will to power" cannot have been evolved.

691.

What is the relation of the whole of the organic process towards the rest of nature?--Here the fundamental will reveals itself.

692.

Is the "will to power" a kind of will, or is it identical with the concept will? Is it equivalent to desiring or commanding; is it the will which Schopenhauer says is the essence of things?

My proposition is that the will of psychologists hitherto has been an unjustifiable generalisation, and that there is no such thing as this sort of will, that instead of the development of one will into several forms being taken as a fact, the character of will has been cancelled owing to the fact that its content, its "whither," was subtracted from it: in Schopenhauer this is so in the highest degree; what he calls "will" is merely an empty word. There is even less plausibility in the will to live: for life is simply one of the manifestations of the will to power; it is quite arbitrary and ridiculous to suggest that everything is striving to enter into this particular form of the will to power.

693.

If the innermost essence of existence is the will to power; if happiness is every increase of power, and unhappiness the feeling of not being able to resist, of not being able to become master: may we not then postulate happiness and pain as cardinal facts? Is will possible without these two oscillations of yea and nay? But who feels happiness? ... Who will have power? ... Nonsensical question! If the essence of all things is itself will to power, and consequently the ability to feel pleasure and pain! Albeit: contrasts and obstacles are necessary, therefore also, relatively, units which trespass on one another.

694.

According to the obstacles which a force seeks with a view of overcoming them, the measure of the failure and the fatality thus provoked must increase, and in so far as every force can only manifest itself against some thing that opposes it, an element of unhappiness is necessarily inherent in every action. But this pain acts as a greater incitement to life, and increases the will to power.

695.

If pleasure and pain are related to the feeling of power, life would have to represent such an increase in power that the difference, the "plus," would have to enter consciousness. A dead level of power, if maintained, would have to measure its happiness in relation to depreciations of that level, _i.e._ in relation to states of unhappiness and not of happiness.... The will to an increase lies in the essence of happiness: that power is enhanced, and that this difference becomes conscious.

In a state of decadence after a certain time the opposite difference becomes conscious, that is decrease: the memory of former strong moments depresses the present feelings of happiness in this state comparison reduces happiness.

696.

It is not the satisfaction of the will which is the cause of happiness (to this superficial theory I am more particularly opposed--this absurd psychological forgery in regard to the most simple things), but it is that the will is always striving to overcome that which stands in its way. The feeling of happiness lies precisely in the discontentedness of the will, in the fact that without opponents and obstacles it is never satisfied. "The happy man": a gregarious ideal.

697.

The normal discontent of our instincts--for instance, of the instinct of hunger, of sex, of movement--contains nothing which is in itself depressing; it rather provokes the feeling of life, and, whatever the pessimists may say to us, like all the rhythms of small and irritating stimuli, it strengthens. Instead of this discontent making us sick of life, it is rather the great stimulus to life.

(Pleasure might even perhaps be characterised as the rhythm of small and painful stimuli.)

698.

Kant says: "These lines of Count Verri's (_Sull' indole del piacere e del dolore;_ 1781) I confirm with absolute certainty: 'Il solo principio motore dell' uomo è il dolore. Il dolore precede ogni piacere. Il piacere non è un essere positivo.'"[5]

[Footnote 5: _On the Nature of Pleasure and Pain._ "The only motive force of man is pain. Pain precedes every pleasure. Pleasure is not a positive thing."--Tr.]

699.

Pain is something different from pleasure--I mean it is not the latter's opposite.

If the essence of pleasure has been aptly characterised as the feeling of increased power (that is to say, as a feeling of difference which presupposes comparison), that does not define the nature of pain. The false contrasts which the people, and consequently the language, believes in, are always dangerous fetters which impede the march of truth. There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned by a certain rhythmic sequence of small, painful stimuli: in this way a very rapid growth of the feeling of power and of the feeling of pleasure is attained. This is the case, for instance, in tickling, also in the sexual tickling which accompanies the coitus: here we see pain acting as the ingredient of happiness. It seems to be a small hindrance which is overcome, followed immediately by another small hindrance which once again is overcome--this play of resistance and resistance overcome is the greatest excitant of that complete feeling of overflowing and surplus power which constitutes the essence of happiness.

The converse, which would be an increase in the feeling of pain through small intercalated pleasurable stimuli, does not exist: pleasure and pain are not opposites.

Pain is undoubtedly an intellectual process in which a judgment is inherent--the judgment harmful, in which long experience is epitomised. There is no such thing as pain in itself. It is not the wound that hurts, it is the experience of the harmful results a wound may have for the whole organism, which here speaks in this deeply moving way, and is called pain. (In the case of deleterious influences which were unknown to ancient man, as, for instance, those residing in the new combination of poisonous chemicals, the hint from pain is lacking, and we are lost.)

That which is quite peculiar in pain is the prolonged disturbance, the quivering subsequent to a terrible shock in the ganglia of the nervous system. As a matter of fact, nobody suffers from the cause of pain (from any sort of injury, for instance), but from the protracted disturbance of his equilibrium which follows upon the shock. Pain is a disease of the cerebral centres--pleasure is no disease at all.

The fact that pain may be the cause of reflex actions has appearances and even philosophical prejudice in its favour. But in very sudden accidents, if we observe closely, we find that the reflex action occurs appreciably earlier than the feeling of pain. I should be in a bad way when I stumbled if I had to wait until the fact had struck the bell of my consciousness, and until a hint of what I had to do had been telegraphed back to me. On the contrary, what I notice as clearly as possible is, that first, in order to avoid a fall, reflex action on the part of my foot takes place, and then, after a certain measurable space of time, there follows quite suddenly a kind of painful wave in my forehead. Nobody, then, reacts to pain. Pain is subsequently projected into the wounded quarter--but the essence of this local pain is nevertheless not the expression of a kind of local wound, it is merely a local sign, the strength and nature of which is in keeping with the severity of the wound, and of which the nerve centres have taken note. The fact that as the result of this shock the muscular power of the organism is materially reduced, does not prove in any way that the essence of pain is to be sought in the lowering of the feeling of power.

Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no "cause" of action. Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and earlier process--both originate at different points....

700.

The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the individual as a whole.

Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel, and which the individual does not?

701.

"The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently it were better that the world did not exist"--"The world is something which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject"--this futile gossip now calls itself pessimism!

Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value,--they are one with the feeling "useful," "harmful," and therefore they are absolutely fugitive and relative. For in regard to all utility and harmfulness there are a hundred different ways of asking "what for?"

I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of profoundly impoverished life.

702.

Man does not seek happiness and does not avoid unhappiness. Everybody knows the famous prejudices I here contradict. Pleasure and pain are mere results, mere accompanying phenomena--that which every man, which every tiny particle of a living organism will have, is an increase of power. In striving after this, pleasure and pain are encountered; it is owing to that will that the organism seeks opposition and requires that which stands in its way.... Pain as the hindrance of its will to power is therefore a normal feature, a natural ingredient of every organic phenomenon; man does not avoid it, on the contrary, he is constantly in need of it: every triumph, every feeling of pleasure, every event presupposes an obstacle overcome.

Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment; the protoplasm extends its pseudopodia in order to seek for that which resists it,--it does not do so out of hunger, but owing to its will to power. Then it makes the attempt to overcome, to appropriate, and to incorporate that with which it comes into contact--what people call "nourishment" is merely a derivative, a utilitarian application, of the primordial will to become stronger.

Pain is so far from acting as a diminution of our feeling of power, that it actually forms in the majority of cases a spur to this feeling,--the obstacle is the stimulus of the will to power.

703.

Pain has been confounded with one of its subdivisions, which is exhaustion: the latter does indeed represent a profound reduction and lowering of the will to power, a material loss of strength--that is to say, there is _(a)_ pain as the stimulus to an increase or power, and _(b)_ pain following upon an expenditure of power; in the first case it is a spur, in the second it is the outcome of excessive spurring.... The inability to resist is proper to the latter form of pain: the provocation of that which resists is proper to the former.... The only happiness which is to be felt in the state of exhaustion is that of going to sleep; in the other case, happiness means triumph.... The great confusion of psychologists consisted in the fact that they did not keep these two kinds of happiness--that of falling asleep, and that of triumph--sufficiently apart. Exhausted people will have repose, slackened limbs, peace and quiet--and these things constitute the bliss of Nihilistic religions and philosophies, the wealthy in vital strength, the active, want triumph, defeated opponents, and the extension of their feeling of power over ever wider regions. Every healthy function of the organism has this need,--and the whole organism constitutes an intricate complexity of systems struggling for the increase of the feeling of power....

704.

How is it that the fundamental article of faith in all psychologies is a piece of most outrageous contortion and fabrication? "Man strives after happiness," for instance--how much of this is true? In order to understand what life is, and what kind of striving and tenseness life contains, the formula should hold good not only of trees and plants, but of animals also. "What does the plant strive after?"--But here we have already invented a false entity which does not exist,--concealing and denying the fact of an infinitely variegated growth, with individual and semi-individual starting-points, if we give it the clumsy title "plant" as if it were a unit. It is very obvious that the ultimate and smallest "individuals" cannot be understood in the sense of metaphysical individuals or atoms; their sphere of power is continually shifting its ground: but with all these changes, can it be said that any of them strives after happiness?--All this expanding, this incorporation and growth, is a search for resistance; movement is essentially related to states of pain: the driving power here must represent some other desire if it leads to such continual willing and seeking of pain.--To what end do the trees of a virgin forest contend with each other? "For happiness"?--For power! ...

Man is now master of the forces of nature, and master too of his own wild and unbridled feelings (the passions have followed suit, and have learned to become useful)--in comparison with primeval man, the man of to-day represents an enormous quantum of power, but not an increase in happiness! How can one maintain, then, that he has striven after happiness?..

705.

But while I say this I see above me, and below the stars, the glittering rat's-tail of errors which hitherto has represented the greatest inspiration of man: "All happiness is the result of virtue all virtue is the result of free will"!

Let us transvalue the values: all capacity is the outcome of a happy organisation, all freedom is the outcome of capacity (freedom understood here as facility in self-direction. Every artist will understand me).

706.

"The value of life."--Every life stands by itself; all existence must be justified, and not only life,--the justifying principle must be one through which life itself speaks.

Life is only a means to something: it is the expression of the forms of growth in power.

707.

The "conscious world" cannot be a starting-point for valuing: an "objective" valuation is necessary.

In comparison with the enormous and complicated antagonistic processes which the collective life of every organism represents, its conscious world of feelings, intentions, and valuations, is only a small slice. We have absolutely no right to postulate this particle of consciousness as the object, the wherefore, of the collective phenomena of life: the attainment of consciousness is obviously only an additional means to the unfolding of life and to the extension of its power. That is why it is a piece of childish simplicity to set up happiness, or intellectuality, or morality, or any other individual sphere of consciousness, as the highest value: and maybe to justify "the world" with it.

This is my fundamental objection to all philosophical and moral cosmologies and theologies, to all wherefores and highest values that have appeared in philosophies and philosophic religions hitherto. A kind of means is misunderstood as the object itself: conversely life and its growth of power were debased to a means.

If we wished to postulate an adequate object of life it would not necessarily be related in any way with the category of conscious life; it would require rather to explain conscious life as a mere means to itself....

The "denial of life" regarded as the object of life, the object of evolution! Existence--a piece of tremendous stupidity! Any such mad interpretation is only the outcome of life's being measured by the factors of consciousness (pleasure and pain, good and evil). Here the means are made to stand against the end--the "unholy," absurd, and, above all, disagreeable means: how can the end be any use when it requires such means? But where the fault lies is here--instead of looking for the end which would explain the necessity of such means, we posited an end from the start which actually excludes such means, _i.e._ we made a desideratum in regard to certain means (especially pleasurable, rational, and virtuous) into a rule, and then only did we decide what end would be desirable....

Where the fundamental fault lies is in the fact that, instead of regarding consciousness as an instrument and an isolated phenomenon of life in general, we made it a standard, the highest value in life: it is the faulty standpoint of _a parte ad totum,_--and that is why all philosophers are instinctively seeking at the present day for a collective consciousness, a thing that lives and wills consciously with all that happens, a "Spirit," a "God." But they must be told that it is precisely thus that life is converted into a monster; that a "God" and a general sensorium would necessarily be something on whose account the whole of existence would have to be condemned.... Our greatest relief came when we eliminated the general consciousness which postulates ends and means--in this way we ceased from being necessarily pessimists.... Our greatest indictment of life was the existence of God.

708.

_Concerning the value of "Becoming."_--If the movement of the world really tended to reach a final state, that state would already have been reached. The only fundamental fact, however, is that it does not tend to reach a final state: and every philosophy and scientific hypothesis (_e.g._ materialism) according to which such a final state is necessary, is refuted by this fundamental fact.

I should like to have a concept of the world which does justice to this fact. Becoming ought to be explained without having recourse to such final designs. Booming must appear justified at every instant (or it must defy all valuation: which has unity as its end); the present must not under any circumstances be justified by a future, nor must the past be justified for the sake of the present. "Necessity" must not be interpreted in the form of a prevailing and ruling collective force or as a prime motor; and still less as the necessary cause of some valuable result. But to this end it is necessary to deny a collective consciousness for Becoming,--a "God," in order that life may not be veiled under the shadow of a being who feels and knows as we do and yet _wills_ nothing: "God" is useless if he wants nothing; and if he do want something, this presupposes a general sum of suffering and irrationality which lowers the general value of Becoming. Fortunately any such general power is lacking (a suffering God overlooking everything, a general sensorium and ubiquitous Spirit, would be the greatest indictment of existence).

Strictly speaking nothing of the nature of Being must be allowed to remain,--because in that case Becoming loses its value and gets to be sheer and superfluous nonsense.

The next question, then, is: how did the illusion Being originate (why was it obliged to originate);

Likewise: how was it that all valuations based upon the hypothesis that there was such a thing as Being came to be depreciated.

But in this way we have recognised that this hypothesis concerning Being is the source of all the calumny that has been directed against the world (the "Better world," the "True world" the "World Beyond," the "Thing-in-itself").

(1) Becoming has no final state, it does not tend towards stability.

(2) Becoming is not a state of appearance, the world of Being is probably only appearance.

(3) Becoming is of precisely the same value at every instant; the sum of its value always remains equal: expressed otherwise, it has no value; for that according to which it might be measured, and in regard to which the word value might have some sense, is entirely lacking. The collective value of the world defies valuation; for this reason philosophical pessimism belongs to the order of farces.

709.

We should not make our little desiderata the judges of existence! Neither should we make culminating evolutionary forms (_e.g._ mind) the "absolute" which stands behind evolution!

710.