Part 8

Has anybody ever been able to testify to a _force!_ No, but to _effects,_ translated into a completely strange language. Regularity in sequence has so spoilt us, _that we no longer wonder at the wonderful process._

621.

A force of which we cannot form any idea, is an empty word, and ought to have no civic rights in the city of science: and the same applies to the purely mechanical powers of attracting and repelling by means of which we can form an image of the world--no more!

622.

_Squeezes and kicks_ are something incalculably recent, evolved and not primeval. They presuppose something which holds together and _can_ press and strike! But how could it hold together?

623.

There is nothing _unalterable_ in chemistry: this is only appearance, a mere school prejudice. We it was who _introduced_ the unalterable, taking it from metaphysics as usual, Mr. Chemist. It is a mere superficial judgment to declare that the diamond, graphite, and carbon are identical. Why? Simply because no loss of substance can be traced in the scales! Well then, at least they have something in common; but the work of the molecules in the process of changing from one form to the other, an action we can neither see nor weigh, is just exactly what makes one material something different--with specifically different qualities.

624.

_Against_ the physical _atom._--In order to understand the world, we must be able to reckon it up; in order to be able to reckon it up, we must be aware of constant causes; but since we find no such constant causes in reality, we _invent_ them for ourselves and call them atoms. This is the origin of the atomic theory.

The possibility of calculating the world, the possibility of expressing all phenomena by means of formulæ--is that really "understanding"? What would be understood of a piece of music, if all that were calculable in it and capable of being expressed in formulas, were reckoned up?--Thus "constant causes", things, substances, something "unconditioned," were therefore _invented_;--what has been attained thereby?

625.

The mechanical concept of "movement" is already a translation of the original process into the _language of symbols of the eye and the touch._

The concept _atom,_ the distinction between the "seat of a motive force and the force itself," is a _language of symbols derived from our logical and physical world._

It does not lie within our power to alter our means of expression: it is possible to understand to what extend they are but symptomatic. To demand an _adequate means of expression is nonsense_: it lies at the heart of a language, of a medium of communication, to express _relation_ only.... The concept "truth" is _opposed to good sense._ The whole province of truth--_falseness_ only applies to the relations between beings, not to an "absolute." There is no such thing as a "being in itself" (_relations_ in the first place constitute being), any more than there can be "knowledge in itself."

626.

"_The feeling of force_ cannot proceed from movement: feeling in general cannot proceed from movement."

"Even in support of this, an apparent experience is the only evidence: in a substance (brain) feeling is generated through transmitted motion (stimuli). But generated? Would this show that the feeling did _not_ yet exist there _at all_? so that its appearance would _have_ to be regarded as the _creative act_ of the intermediary--motion? The feelingless condition of this substance is only an hypothesis! not an experience! Feeling, therefore is the _quality_ of the substance: there actually are substances that feel."

"Do we learn from certain substances that they have _no_ feeling? No, we merely cannot tell that they have any. It is impossible to seek the origin of feeling in non-sensitive substance."--_Oh what hastiness!_

627.

"To attract" and "to repel", in a purely mechanical sense, is pure fiction: a word. We cannot imagine an attraction without a _purpose.--_ Either the will to possess one's self of a thing, or the will to defend one's self from a thing or to repel it--_that_ we "understand"; that would be an interpretation which we could use.

In short, the psychological necessity of believing in causality lies in the _impossibility of imagining a process without a purpose_: but of course this says nothing concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)! The belief in _causæ_ collapses with the belief in τέλει (against Spinoza and his causationism).

628.

It is an illusion to suppose that something is _known,_ when all we have is a mathematical formula of what has happened; it is only _characterised, described;_ no more!

629.

If I bring a regularly recurring phenomenon into a formula, I have facilitated and shortened my task of characterising the whole phenomenon, etc. But I have not thereby ascertained a "law," I have only replied to the question: How is it that something recurs here? It is a supposition that the formula corresponds to a complex of really unknown forces and the discharge of forces; it is pure mythology to suppose that forces here obey a law, so that, as the result of their obedience, we have the same phenomenon every time.

630.

I take good care not to speak of chemical "_laws_": to do so savours of morality. It is much more a question of establishing certain relations of power: the stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot maintain its degree of independence,--here there is no pity, no quarter, and, still less, any observance of "law."

631.

The unalterable sequence of certain phenomena does not prove any "law," but a relation of power between two or more forces. To say, "But it is precisely this relation that remains the same!" is no better than saying, "One and the same force cannot be another force."--It is not a matter of _sequence,_ but a matter of _interdependence,_ a process in which the procession of moments do _not_ determine each other after the manner of cause and effect....

The separation of the "action" from the "agent"; of the phenomenon from the _worker_ of that phenomenon: of the process from one that is not process, but lasting, _substance,_ thing, body, soul, etc.; the attempt to understand a life as a sort of shifting of things and a changing of places; of a sort of "being" or stable entity: this ancient mythology established the belief in "cause and effect," once it had found a lasting form in the functions of speech and grammar.

632.

The "regularity" of a sequence is only a metaphorical expression, not a fact, just _as if_ a rule were followed here! And the same holds good of "conformity to law." We find a formula in order to express an ever-recurring kind of succession of phenomena: but that does not show that we have _discovered a law_; much less a force which is the cause of a recurrence of effects. The fact that something always happens thus or thus, is interpreted here as if a creature always acted thus or thus as the result of obedience to a law or to a lawgiver: whereas apart from the "law" it would be free to act differently. But precisely that inability to act otherwise might originate in the creature itself, it might be that it did not act thus or thus in response to a law, but simply because it was so constituted. It would mean simply: that something cannot also be something else; that it cannot be first this, and then something quite different; that it is neither free nor the reverse, but merely thus or thus. _The fault lies in thinking a subject into things._

633.

To speak of two consecutive states, the first as "cause," and the second as "effect," is false. The first state cannot bring about anything, the second has nothing effected in it.

It is a question of a struggle between two elements unequal in power: a new adjustment is arrived at, according to the measure of power each possesses. The second state is something fundamentally different from the first (it is not its effect): the essential thing Is, that the factors which engage in the struggle leave it with different quanta of power.

634.

_A. criticism of Materialism._--Let us dismiss the two popular concepts, Necessity and Law, from this idea: the first introduces a false constraint, the second a false liberty into the world. "Things" do not act regularly, they follow no _rule:_ there are no things (that is our fiction); neither do they act in accordance with any necessity. There is no obedience here: for, the fact that _something is_ as it is, strong or weak, is not the result of obedience or of a rule or of a constraint....

The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power--this is the question around which all phenomena turn: if we, for our own purposes and calculations, know how to express this in formulas and "laws," all the better for us! But that does not mean that we have introduced any "morality" into the world, just because we have fancied it as obedient.

There are no laws: every power draws its last consequence at every moment. Things are calculable precisely owing to the fact that there is no possibility of their being otherwise than they are.

A quantum of power is characterised by the effect it produces and the influence it resists. The adiaphoric state which would be thinkable in itself, is entirely lacking. It is essentially a will to violence and a will to defend one's self against violence. It is not self-preservation: every atom exercises its influence over the whole of existence--it is thought out of existence if one thinks this radiation of will-power away. That is why I call it a quantum of "_Will to Power_"; with this formula one can express the character which cannot be abstracted in thought from mechanical order, without suppressing the latter itself in thought.

The translation of the world of effect into a _visible_ world--a world for the eye--is the concept "movement." Here it is always understood that _something_ has been moved,--whether it be the fiction of an atomic globule or even of the abstraction of the latter, the dynamic atom, something is always imagined that has an effect--that is to say, we have not yet rid ourselves of the habit into which our senses and speech inveigled us. Subject and object, an agent to the action, the action and that which does it separated: we must not forget that all this signifies no more than semeiotics and--nothing real. Mechanics as a teaching of _movement_ is already a translation of phenomena into man's language of the senses.

635.

We are in need of "unities" in order to be able to reckon: but this is no reason for supposing that "unities" actually _exist._ We borrowed the concept "unity" from our concept "ego,"--our very oldest article of faith. If we did not believe ourselves to be unities we should never have formed the concept "thing." Now--that is to say, somewhat late in the day, we are overwhelmingly convinced that our conception of the concept "ego" is no security whatever for a real entity. In order to maintain the mechanical interpretation of the world theoretically, we must always make the reserve that it is with fictions that we do so: the concept of _movement_ (derived from the language of our senses) and the concept of the _atom_ (= entity, derived from our psychical experience) are based upon a _sense-prejudice_ and a _psychological prejudice._

Mechanics formulates consecutive phenomena, and it does so semeiologically, in the terms of the senses and of the mind (that all influence is _movement_; that where there is movement something is at work moving): it does not touch the question of the causal force.

The _mechanical_ world is imagined as the eye and the sense of touch alone could imagine a world (as "moved"),--in such a way as to be calculable,--as to simulate causal entities "things" (atoms) whose effect is constant (the transfer of the false concept of subject to the concept atom).

The mixing together of the concept of numbers, of the concept of thing (the idea of subject), of the concept of activity (the separation of that which is the cause, and the effect), of the concept of movement: all these things are phenomenal; our eye and our _psychology_ are still in it all.

If we eliminate these adjuncts, nothing remains over but dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: the essence of which resides in their relation to all other quanta, in their "influence" upon the latter. The will to power, not Being, not Becoming, but a _pathos_--is the elementary fact, from these first results a Becoming, an influencing....

636.

The physicists believe in a "true world" after their own kind; a fixed _systematising of atoms_ to perform necessary movements, and holding good equally of all creatures, so that, according to them, the "world of appearance" reduces itself to the side of general and generally-needed Being, which is accessible to every one according to his kind (accessible and also adjusted,--made "subjective"). But here they are in error. The atom which they postulate is arrived at by the logic of that perspective of consciousness; it is in itself therefore a subjective fiction. This picture of the world which they project is in no way essentially different from the subjective picture: the only difference is, that it is composed simply with more extended senses, but certainly with _our_ senses.... And in the end, without knowing it, they left something out of the constellation: precisely the necessary _perspective factor,_ by means of which every centre of power--and not man alone--constructs the rest of the world _from its point of view_--that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength.... They forgot to reckon with this perspective-fixing power, in "true being,"--or, in school-terms, subject-being. They suppose that this was "evolved" and added;--but even the chemical investigator needs it: it is indeed _specific Being,_ which determines action and reaction according to circumstances.

_Perspectivity is only a complex form, of specificness._ My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by "combining" with those) which are sufficiently related to it--_and thus they conspire together for power._ And the process continues.

637.

Even in the inorganic world all that concerns an atom of energy is its immediate neighbourhood: distant forces balance each other. Here is the root of _perspectivity,_ and it explains why a living organism is "egoistic" to the core.

638.

Granting that the world disposed of a quantum of force, it is obvious that any transposition of force to any place would affect the whole system--thus, besides the causality of _sequence,_ there would also be a dependence, _contiguity,_ and _coincidence._

639.

The only possible way of upholding the sense of the concept "God" would be: to make _Him not_ the motive force, but the condition of _maximum power,_ an _epoch;_ a point in the further development of the _Will to Power;_ by means of which subsequent evolution just as much as former evolution--up to Him--could be explained.

Viewed mechanically, the energy of collective Becoming remains constant; regarded from the economical standpoint, it ascends to its zenith and then recedes therefrom in order to remain eternally rotatory. This "_Will to Power_" expresses itself in the _interpretation in the manner in which the strength is used._--The conversion of energy into life; "life in its highest power" thenceforward appears as the goal. The same amount of energy, at different stages of development, means different things.

That which determines growth in Life is the economy which becomes ever more sparing and methodical, which achieves ever more and more with a steadily decreasing amount of energy.... The ideal is the principle of the least possible expense....

The only thing _that is proved_ is that the world is _not_ striving towards a state of stability. Consequently its zenith must not be conceived as a state of absolute equilibrium....

The dire necessity of the same things happening in the course of the world, as in all other things, is not an eternal determinism reigning over all phenomena, but merely the expression of the fact that the impossible is not possible; that a given force cannot be different from that given force; that a given quantity of resisting force does not manifest itself otherwise than in conformity with its degree of strength;--to speak of events as being necessary is tautological.

2. The Will to Power as Life.

_(a) The Organic Process._

640.

Man imagines that he was present at the generation of the organic world: what was there to be observed, with the eyes and the touch, in regard to these processes? How much of it can be put into round numbers? What rules are noticeable in the movements? Thus, man would fain arrange all phenomena as if they were _for the eye and for the touch,_ as if they were forms of motion: he will discover _formules_ wherewith to _simplify_ the unwieldy mass of these experiences.

_The reduction of all phenomena_ to the level of men with senses and with mathematics. It is a matter of making _an inventory of human experiences:_ granting that man, or rather the _human eye and the ability to form concepts,_ have been the eternal witnesses of all things.

641.

A plurality of forces bound by a common nutritive process we call "Life." To this nutritive process all so-called feeling, thinking, and imagining belong as means--that is to say, (1) in the form of opposing other forces; (2) in the form of an adjustment of other forces according to mould and rhythm; (3) the form of a valuation relative to assimilation and excretion.

642.

The bond between the inorganic and the organic world must lie in the repelling power exercised by every atom of energy. "Life" might be defined as a lasting form of _force-establishing processes,_ in which the various contending forces, on their part, grow unequally. To what extent does counter-strife exist even in obedience? Individual power is by no means surrendered through it. In the same way, there exists in the act of commanding, an acknowledgment of the fact that the absolute power of the adversary has not been overcome, absorbed, or dissipated. "Obedience," and "command," are forms of the game of war.

643.

The Will to Power _interprets_ (an organ in the process of formation has to be interpreted): it defines, it determines gradations, differences of power. Mere differences of power could not be aware of each other as such: something must be there which _will_ grow, and which interprets all other things that would do the same, according to the value of the latter. In sooth, all interpretation is but a means in itself to become master of something. (Continual _interpretation_ is the first principle of the organic process.)

644.

Greater complexity, sharp differentiation, the contiguity of the developed organs and functions, with the disappearance of intermediate members--if _that_ is _perfection,_ then there is a Will to Power apparent in the organic process by means of whose _dominating, shaping,_ and _commanding_ forces it is continually increasing the sphere of its power, and persistently simplifying things within that sphere, it _grows_ imperatively.

"Spirit" is only a means and an instrument in the service of higher life, in the service of the elevation of life.

645.

"_Heredity,_" as something quite incomprehensible, cannot be used as an explanation, but only as a designation for the identification of a problem. And the same holds good of "_adaptability._" As a matter of fact, the account of morphology, even supposing it were perfect, _explains_ nothing, it merely describes an enormous fact. _How_ a given organ gets to be used for any particular purpose is not explained. There is just as little explained in regard to these things by the assumption of _causæ finales_ as by the assumption of _causæ efficientes._ The concept "causa" is only a means of expression, no _more_; a means of designating a thing.

646.

They are analogies; for instance, our _memory_ may suggest another kind of memory which makes itself felt in heredity, development, and forms. Our _inventive_ and experimentative powers suggest another kind of inventiveness in the application of instruments to new ends, etc.

That which we call our "_consciousness_" is quite guiltless of any of the essential processes of our preservation and growth; and no human brain could be so subtle as to construct anything more than a machine--to which every organic process is infinitely superior.

647.

_Against Darwinism._--The use of an organ does _not_ explain its origin, on the contrary! During the greater part of the time occupied in the formation of a certain quality, this quality does not help to preserve the individual; it is of no use to him, and particularly not in his struggle with external circumstances and foes.

What is ultimately "useful"? It is necessary to ask, "Useful for what"?

For instance, that which promotes the _lasting powers_ of the individual might be unfavourable to his strength or his beauty; that which preserves him might at the same time fix him and keep him stable throughout development. On the other hand, a _deficiency,_ a state of _degeneration,_ may be of the greatest possible use, inasmuch as it acts as a stimulus to other organs. In the same way, a _state of need_ may be a condition of existence, inasmuch as it reduces an individual to that modicum of means which, though it _keeps him together,_ does not allow him to squander his strength.--The individual himself is the struggle of parts (for nourishment, space, etc.): his development involves the _triumph,_ the _predominance,_ of isolated parts; the _wasting away,_ or the "development into organs," of other parts.

The influence of "environment" is nonsensically _overrated_ in Darwin, the essential factor in the process of life is precisely the tremendous inner power to shape and to create forms, which merely _uses, exploits_ "environment."

The new forms built up by this inner power are not produced with a view to any end; but, in the struggle between the parts, a new form does not exist long _without_ becoming related to some kind of semi-utility, and, according to its use, develops itself ever more and more perfectly.

648.

"Utility" in respect of the acceleration of the speed of evolution, is a different kind of "utility" from that which is understood to mean the greatest possible stability and staying power of the evolved creature.

649.

"Useful" in the sense of Darwinian biology means: that which favours a thing in its struggle with others. But in my opinion the _feeling of being surcharged,_ the feeling accompanying an _increase in strength,_ quite apart from the utility of the struggle, is the actual _progress_: from these feelings the will to war is first derived.

650.

Physiologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to _discharge_ its strength: "_self-preservation" _ is only one of the results thereof.--Let us beware of _superfluous_ teleological principles!--one of which is the whole concept of "self-preservation."[4]

[Footnote 4: See _Beyond Good and Evil,_ in this edition, Aph. 13.]

651.