Part 4

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 organising and systematising. The domain of the nervous system is much more extensive: the realm of consciousness is superadded. In the collective process of adaptation and systematising, 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 the _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 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 _overestimation 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.

_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 πρῶτον ψεῡδος: 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 _fine!_ But if I do not already "know" whether there is, or can be, such a thing as knowledge, I cannot reasonably ask the question, "What is knowledge?" Kant _believes_ in the fact of knowledge: what he requires is a piece of _naïveté: 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.

The conclusion, therefore, is: (1) there are propositions 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 (1) that there are some propositions 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 knowledge, 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 knowledge 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 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 equalises 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 equalising 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 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 accurate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit.

"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 instance, in regard to causality.

533.

Logical accuracy, transparency, considered as the criterion of truth ("_omne illud verum est, quod clare 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 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 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.

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 tyrannise 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?_--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 suppose 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 of _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.

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 himself, 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 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 Cæsar and Napoleon (see Stendhal's remark concerning him),[3] 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.

[Footnote 3: 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 à plus forte raison quand il écrit."]

_(h)_ 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 visualised 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.

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, 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 subject, 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: 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 _design._ 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, resistance, a muscular feeling, which is already the 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 embraced 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.... 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."...

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 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). _There is no such thing 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 nor capable of effecting. Causa_ is a _faculty to effect something,_ superadded fancifully to what happens....

_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 necessity 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, 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_, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already _known._--It is not a search for causes, but for the familiar.

552.