Part 3

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 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 permeated by valuations (useful or harmful--consequently, pleasant or painful). Every particular colour; besides being a colour, expresses a value to us (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after it has affected us exclusively for a long time, as in the case of convicts in gaol or lunatics). Insects likewise react in different ways to different colours: some like this shade, the others that. Ants are a case in point.

506.

In the beginning _images_ how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then _words,_ 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 confusion 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 that is so," is the essence of "truth." In all valuations, the conditions of _preservation_ and of _growth_ find expression. All our _organs and senses_ of knowledge 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 prerequisites 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 logic grew: the gregarious instinct in the background. The assumption of similar facts is the first condition for "similar souls." _For the purpose of mutual understanding and government._

510.

Concerning the _origin of logic._ The fundamental proneness to _equalise_ things and to _see them equal_, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what is useful or harmful--in fact, by considerations of success: it then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder way, without at the same time denying life or 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 will which _would fain have it_ as similar as possible.

512.

Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted _that identical cases exist_. As a matter of fact, before one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, _this_ condition _must_ first be assumed. That is to say, the will to _logical truth_ cannot be consummated before a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has been assumed. From which it follows that an 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 schematise,--to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos, as our practical needs require. In the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was a need in us that was the determining power: not the need "to know," but to classify, to schematise, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation. (The adjustment and interpretation of all similar and equal things,--the same process, which every sensual impression undergoes, is the development of reason!) No pre-existing "idea" had anything to do with it: but utility, which teaches us that things can be reckoned with and managed, only when we view them roughly as equal.... _Finality_ in reason is an effect, not a cause: Life degenerates with every other form of reason, although constant attempts are being made to attain to those other forms of reason;--for Life would then become too obscure, too unequal.

The categories are "truths" only in the sense that they are the conditions of our existence, just 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 contradictionis_ is the most certain of all principles; if it is the most ultimate of all, and the basis of every demonstration; if the principle of every other axiom lie within it: then one should analyse it all the more severely, in order to discover how many assumptions _already lie_ at its root. It either assumes something concerning reality and Being, as if these had become known in some other sphere--that is to say, as if it were _impossible_ to ascribe the opposite attributes to it; or the 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 proposition 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 substratum of A; _our belief in things_ is the first condition of our faith in logic. The A in logic is, like the atom, a reconstruction of the thing.... By not understanding this, and by making logic into a criterion of _real being,_ we are already on the road to the classification of all those hypostases, substance, attribute, object, subject, action, etc., as realities--that is to say, the conception of a metaphysical world or a "real world" (--_this is, however, once more the world of appearance..._).

The primitive acts of thought, affirmation, and negation, the holding of a thing for true, and the holding of a thing for not true,--in so far as they do not only presuppose a mere habit, but the very _right_ to postulate truth or untruth at all,--are already dominated by a belief, _that there is such a thing as knowledge for us,_ and _that judgments can really hit the truth:_ in short, logic never doubts that it is able to pronounce something concerning truth in itself (--that is to say, that to the thing which is in itself true, no opposite attributes _can_ be ascribed).

In this belief there _reigns_ the sensual and coarse prejudice that our sensations teach us _truths_ concerning things,--that I cannot at the same moment of time say of one and the same thing that it is _hard_ and _soft._ (The instinctive proof, "I cannot have two opposite sensations at once," is quite _coarse_ and _false_.)

That all contradiction in concepts should be forbidden, is the result of a belief, that we _are able_ to form concepts, that a concept not only characterises 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 understand the actual world according to a scheme of Being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is our 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 formulæ 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 the will to _classify_ phenomena according to definite categories. In this way we start out with a belief in the "true nature" of things (we regard 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 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 everything 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, _knowledge 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----_

520.

The continual transitions that occur, forbid our speaking of the "individual," etc.; the "number" of beings itself fluctuates. We should know nothing 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" possible--that is to say, as a measuring of earlier 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 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_ 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 ourselves, 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 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 equalising, 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 colourless _concepts._ Language is built upon the most _naïf_ prejudices.

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.

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, probably 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.

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 outer 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 of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, in consciousness, does 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 _consciousness_ 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 understood, 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 savours 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 the _notion_ of a complex fact have to precede it as its cause?