Part 9

The most-fundamental--and most primeval activity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will to self-preservation, for it absorbs an amount of material which is absurdly out of proportion with the needs of its preservation: and what is more, it does _not_ "preserve itself" in the process, but actually falls to _pieces...._ The instinct which rules here, must account for this total absence in the organism of a desire to preserve itself: hunger is already an interpretation based upon the observation of a more or less complex organism (hunger is a specialised and later form of the instinct; it is an expression of the system of divided labour, in the service of a higher instinct which rules the whole).

652.

It is just as impossible to regard _hunger_ as the _primum mobile,_ as it is to take self-preservation to be so. Hunger, considered as the result of insufficient nourishment, means hunger as the result of a will to power _which can no longer dominate_ It is not a question of replacing a loss, it is only later on, as the result of the division of labour, when the Will to Power has discovered other and quite different ways of gratifying itself, that the appropriating lust of the organism is _reduced_ to hunger--to the need of replacing what has been lost.

653.

We can but laugh at the false "_Altruism_" of biologists: propagation among the amœbæ appears as a process of jetsam, as an advantage to them. It is an excretion of useless matter.

654.

The division of a protoplasm into two takes place when its power is no longer sufficient to subjugate the matter it has appropriated: procreation is the result of impotence.

In the cases in which the males seek the females and become one with them, procreation is the result of hunger.

655.

The weaker vessel is driven to the stronger from a need of nourishment; it desires to get under it, if possible to become _one_ with it. The stronger, on the contrary, defends itself from others; it refuses to perish in this way; it prefers rather to split itself into two or more parts in the process of growing. One may conclude that the greater the urgency seems to become one with something else, the more weakness in some form is present. The greater the tendency to variety, difference, inner decay, the more strength is actually to hand.

The instinct to cleave to something, and the instinct to repel something, are in the inorganic as in the organic world, the uniting bond. The whole distinction is a piece of hasty judgment.

The will to power in every combination of forces, _defending itself against the stronger and coming down unmercifully upon the weaker, is more correct._

N. B. _All processes may be regarded as "beings"._

656.

The will to power can manifest itself only against _obstacles;_ it therefore goes in search of what resists it--this is the primitive tendency of the protoplasm when it extends its _pseudopodia_ and feels about it. The act of appropriation and assimilation is, above all, the result of a desire to overpower, a process of forming, of additional building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior creature's sphere of power, and has increased the latter.--If this process of incorporation does not succeed, then the whole organism falls to pieces; and the _separation_ occurs as the result of the will to power: in order to prevent the escape of that which has been subjected, the will to power falls into two wills (under some circumstances without even abandoning completely its relation to the two).

"Hunger" is only a more narrow adaptation, once the fundamental instinct of power has won power of a more abstract kind.

657.

What is "passive"?

To be hindered in the outward movement of grasping: it is thus an act of resistance and reaction.

What is "active"?

To stretch out for power.

"Nutrition"...

Is only a derived phenomenon; the primitive form of it was the will to stuff everything inside one's own skin.

"Procreation"...

Only derived; originally, in those cases In which one will was unable to organise the collective mass it had appropriated, an _opposing will_ came into power, which undertook to effect the separation and establish a new centre of organisation, after a struggle with the original will.

"Pleasure"...

Is a feeling of power (presupposing the existence of pain).

658.

(1) The organic functions shown to be but forms of the fundamental will, the will to power,--and buds thereof.

(2) The will to power specialises itself as will to nutrition, to property, to _tools,_ to servants (obedience), and to rulers: the body as an example.--The stronger will directs the weaker. There is no other form of causality than that of will to will. It is not to be explained mechanically.

(3) Thinking, feeling, willing, in all living organisms. What is a desire if it be not: a provocation of the feeling of power by an obstacle (or, better still, by rhythmical obstacles and resisting forces)--so that it surges through it? Thus in all pleasure pain is understood.--If the pleasure is to be very great, the pains preceding it must have been very long, and the whole bow of life must have been strained to the utmost.

(4) Intellectual functions. The will to shaping, forming, and making like, etc.

_(b) Man._

659.

_With the body as clue._--Granting that the "_soul_" was only an attractive and mysterious thought, from which philosophers rightly, but reluctantly, separated themselves--that which they have since learnt to put in its place is perhaps even more attractive and even more mysterious. The human _body,_ in which the whole of the most distant and most recent past of all organic life once more becomes living and corporal, seems to flow through, this past and right over it like a huge and inaudible torrent; the body is a more wonderful thought than the old "soul." In all ages the body, as our actual property, as our most certain being, in short, as our ego, has been more earnestly believed in than the spirit (or the "soul," or the subject, as the school jargon now calls it). It has never occurred to any one to regard his stomach as a strange or a divine stomach; but that there is a tendency and a predilection in man to regard all his thoughts as "inspired," all his values as "imparted to him by a God," all his instincts as dawning activities--this is proved by the evidence of every age in man's history. Even now, especially among artists, there may very often be noticed a sort of wonder, and a deferential hesitation to decide, when the question occurs to them, by what means they achieved their happiest work, and from which world the creative thought came down to them: when they question in this way, they are possessed by a feeling of guilelessness and childish shyness. They dare not say: "That came from me; it was my hand which threw that die." Conversely, even those philosophers and theologians, who in their logic and piety found the most imperative reasons for regarding their body as a deception (and even as a deception overcome and disposed of), could not help recognising the foolish fact that the body still remained: and the most unexpected proofs of this are to be found partly in Pauline and partly in Vedantic philosophy. But what does _strength of faith_ ultimately mean? Nothing!--A strong faith might also be a foolish faith!--There is food for reflection.

And supposing the faith in the body were ultimately but the result of a conclusion; supposing it were a false conclusion, as idealists declare it is, would it not then involve some doubt concerning the trustworthiness of the spirit itself which thus causes us to draw wrong conclusions?

Supposing the plurality of things, and space, and time, and motion (and whatever the other first principles of a belief in the body may be) were errors--what suspicions would not then be roused against the spirit which led us to form such first principles? Let it suffice that the belief in the body is, at any rate for the present, a much stronger belief than the belief in the spirit, and he who would fain undermine it assails the authority of the spirit most thoroughly in so doing!

660.

_The Body as an Empire._

The aristocracy in the body, the majority of the rulers (the fight between the cells and the tissues).

Slavery and the division of labour: the higher type alone possible through the _subjection_ of the lower to a function.

Pleasure and pain, not contraries. The feeling of power.

"Nutrition" only a result of the insatiable lust of appropriation in the Will to Power.

"Procreation": this is the decay which supervenes when the ruling cells are too weak to organise appropriated material.

It is the _moulding_ force which will have a continual supply of new material (more "force"). The masterly construction of an organism out of an egg.

"The mechanical interpretation": recognises only quantities: but the real energy is in the quality. Mechanics can therefore only describe processes; it cannot explain them.

"Purpose." We should start out from the "sagacity" of plants.

The concept of "meliorism": _not_ only greater complexity, but greater _power_ (it need not be only greater masses).

Conclusion concerning the evolution of man: the road to perfection lies in the bringing forth of the most powerful individuals, for whose use the great masses would be converted into mere tools (that is to say, into the most intelligent and flexible tools possible).

661.

Why is all _activity,_ even that of a _sense,_ associated with pleasure? Because, before the activity was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done away with. Or, rather, because all action is a process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and of _increasing_ the _feeling of power_? The pleasure of thought. Ultimately it is not only the feeling of power, but also the pleasure of creating and of contemplating the _creation:_ for all activity enters our consciousness in the form of "works."

662.

Creating is an act of selecting and of finishing the thing selected. (In every act of the will, this is the essential element.)

663.

All phenomena which are the result of intentions may be reduced to _the intention of increasing power._

664.

When we do anything, we are conscious of a _feeling of strength;_ we often have this sensation before the act--that is to say, while imagining the thing to do (as, for instance, at the sight of an enemy, of an obstacle, which we feel _equal to_): it is always an accompanying sensation. Instinctively we think that this feeling of strength is the cause of the action, that it is the "motive force." Our belief in causation is the belief in force and its effect; it is a transcript of our experience: in which we identify force and the feeling of force.--Force, however, never moves things; the strength which is conscious "does not set the muscles moving." "Of such a process we have no experience, no idea." "We experience as little concerning force as a motive power, as concerning the _necessity_ of a movement." Force is said to be the constraining element! "All we know is that one thing follows another;--we know nothing of either compulsion or arbitrariness in regard to the one following the other. Causality is first invented by thinking compulsion into the sequence of processes. A certain "understanding" of the thing is the result--that is to say, we humanise the process a little, we make it more "familiar"; the familiar is the known habitual fact of _human compulsion associated with the feeling of force._

665.

I have the intention of extending my arm; taking it for granted that I know as little of the physiology of the human body and of the mechanical laws of its movements as the man in the street, what could there be more vague, more bloodless, more uncertain than this intention compared with what follows it? And supposing I were the astutest of mechanics, and especially conversant with the formulæ which are applicable in this case, I should not be able to extend my arm one whit the better. Our "knowledge" and our "action" in this case lie coldly apart: as though in two different regions.--Again: Napoleon carries out a plan of campaign--what does that mean? In this case, everything concerning the consummation of the campaign is _known,_ because everything must be done through words of command: but even here subordinates are taken for granted, who apply and adapt the general plan to the particular emergency, to the degree of strength, etc.

666.

For ages we have always ascribed the value of an action, of a character, of an existence, to the _intention,_ to the _purpose_ for which it was done, acted, or lived: this primeval idiosyncrasy of taste ultimately takes a dangerous turn provided the lack of intention and purpose in all phenomena comes ever more to the front in consciousness. With it a general depreciation of all values seems to be preparing: "All is without sense."--This melancholy phrase means: "All sense lies in the intention, and if the intention is absolutely lacking, then sense must be lacking too." In conformity with this valuation, people were forced to place the value of life in a a life after death, or in the progressive development of ideas, or of mankind, or of the people, or of man to superman; but in this way the _progressus in infinitum_ of purpose had been reached: it was ultimately necessary to find one's self a place in the process of the world (perhaps with the disdæmonistic outlook, it was a process which led to nonentity).

In regard to this point, "_purpose_" needs a somewhat more severe criticism: it ought to be recognised that an action _is never caused by a purpose;_ that an object and the means thereto are interpretations, by means of which certain points in a phenomena are selected and accentuated, at the cost of other, more numerous, points, that every time something is done for a purpose, something fundamentally different, and yet other things happen; that in regard to the action done with a purpose, the case is the same as with the so-called purposefulness of the heat which is radiated from the sun: the greater part of the total sum is squandered; a portion of it, which is scarcely worth reckoning, has a "purpose," has "sense"; that an "end" with its "means" is an absurdly indefinite description, which indeed may be able to command as a precept, as "will," but presupposes a system of obedient and trained instruments, which, in the place of the indefinite, puts forward a host of determined entities _(i.e._ we imagine a system of _clever_ but narrow intellects who postulate end and means, in order to be able to grant our only known "end," the rôle of the "cause of an action,"--a proceeding to which we have no right: it is tantamount to solving a problem by placing its solution in an inaccessible world which we cannot observe).

Finally, why could not an "end" be merely an _accompanying feature_ in the series of changes among the active forces which bring about the action--a pale stenographic symbol stretched in consciousness beforehand, and which serves as a guide to what happens, even as a symbol of what happens, _not_ as its cause?--But in this way we criticise _will_ itself: is it not an illusion to regard that which enters consciousness as will-power, as a cause? Are not all conscious phenomena only final phenomena--the lost links in a chain, but apparently conditioning one another in their sequence within the plane of consciousness? This might be an illusion.

667.

Science does _not_ inquire what impels us to will: on the contrary, it _denies_ that _willing_ takes place at all, and supposes that something quite different has happened--in short, that the belief in "will" and "end" is an illusion. It does not inquire into the _motives_ of an action, as if these had been present in consciousness previous to the action, but it first divides the action up into a group of phenomena, and then seeks the previous history of this mechanical movement--but _not_ in the terms of feeling, perception, and thought; from this quarter it can never accept the explanation: perception is precisely the matter of science, _which has to be explained._--The problem of science is precisely to explain the world, _without_ taking perceptions as the cause: for that would mean regarding _perceptions_ themselves as the _cause_ of perceptions. The task of science is by no means accomplished.

Thus: either there is _no_ such thing as will,--the hypothesis of science,--or the will is _free_. The latter assumption represents the prevailing feeling, of which we cannot rid ourselves, even if the hypothesis of science were _proved._

The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the principle that free will _is the cause of every effect:_ thereby alone do we arrive at the feeling of causation. And thereto belongs also the feeling that every cause is _not_ an effect, but always only a cause--if will is the cause. "Our acts of will are _not necessary_"--this lies in the very _concept of "will."_ The effect necessarily comes _after_ the cause--that is what we feel. It is merely a _hypothesis_ that even our willing is compulsory in every case.

668.

"To will" is not "to desire," to strive, to aspire to; it distinguishes itself from that through the _passion of commanding._

There is no such thing as "willing," but only the willing of _something:_ the _aim_ must not be severed from the state--as the epistemologists sever it. "Willing," as they understand it, is no more possible than "thinking": it is a pure invention.

It is essential to willing that something should be _commanded_ (but that does not mean that the will is carried into effect).

The general _state of tension,_ by virtue of which a force seeks to discharge itself, is not "willing."

669.

"Pain" and "pleasure" are the most absurd _means of expressing_ judgments, which of course does not mean that the judgments which are enunciated in this way must necessarily be absurd. The elimination of all substantiation and logic, a yes or no in the reduction to a passionate desire to have or to reject, an imperative abbreviation, the utility of which is irrefutable: that is pain and pleasure. Its origin is in the central sphere of the intellect; its prerequisite is an infinitely accelerated process of perceiving, ordering, co-ordinating, calculating, concluding: pleasure and pain are always final phenomena, they are never causes.

As to deciding what provokes pain and pleasure, that is a question which depends upon the _degree of power:_ the same thing, when confronted with a small quantity of power, may seem a danger and may suggest the need of speedy defence, and when confronted with the consciousness of greater power, may be a voluptuous stimulus and may be followed by a feeling of pleasure.

All feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose a _measuring of collective utility_ and _collective harmfulness_: consequently a sphere where there is the willing of an object (of a condition) and the selection of the means thereto. Pleasure and pain are never "original facts."

The feelings of pleasure and pain are _reactions of the will_ (emotions) in which the intellectual centre fixes the value of certain supervening changes as a collective value, and also as an introduction of contrary actions.

670.

_The belief in "emotions"_--Emotions are a fabrication of the intellect, an invention of _causes_ which do not exist. All general _bodily sensations_ which we do not understand are interpreted intellectually--that is to say, a _reason_ is sought why we feel thus or thus among certain people or in certain experiences. Thus something disadvantageous dangerous, and strange is taken for granted, as if it were the cause of our being indisposed; as a matter of fact, it gets _added to_ the indisposition, so as to make our condition thinkable.--Mighty rushes of blood to the brain, accompanied by a feeling of suffocation, are _interpreted_ as anger: the people and things which provoke our anger are a means of relieving our physiological condition. Subsequently, after long habituation, certain processes and general feelings are so regularly correlated that the sight of certain processes provokes that condition of general feeling, and induces vascular engorgements, the ejection of seminal fluid, etc.: we then say that the "emotion is provoked by propinquity."

_Judgments_ already inhere in pleasure and pain: stimuli become differentiated, according as to whether they increase or reduce the feeling of power.

_The belief in willing._ To believe that a thought may be the cause of a mechanical movement is to believe in miracles. The _consistency of science_ demands that once we have made the world _thinkable_ for ourselves by means of pictures, we should also make the emotions, the desires, the will, etc., _thinkable_--that is to say, we should _deny_ them and treat them as _errors of the intellect._

671.

Free will or no free will?--There is _no such thing_ as "_Will_": that is only a simplified conception on the part of the understanding, like "matter."

_All actions must first be prepared and made possible mechanically before they can be willed._ Or, _in most cases_ the "_object_" of an action enters the brain only after everything is prepared for its accomplishment. The object is an inner "stimulus"--nothing _more._

672.

The most proximate prelude to an action relates to that action: but _further back still_ there lies a preparatory history which covers _a far wider field:_ the individual action is only a factor in a much more extensive and _subsequent_ fact. The shorter and the longer processes are not reported.

673.

The theory of _chance:_ the soul is a selecting and self-nourishing being, which is persistently extremely clever and creative (this _creative_ power is commonly overlocked! it is taken to be merely passive).

I recognised the _active_ and creative _power_ within the accidental.--Accident is in itself nothing more than _the clashing of creative impulses._

674.

Among the enormous multiplicity of phenomena to be observed in an organic being, that part which becomes _conscious_ is a mere means: and the particle of "virtue," "self abnegation," and other fanciful inventions, are denied in a most thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the remaining phenomena. We would do well to study our organism in all its immorality....

The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the animal functions. The whole of _conscious_ life: the spirit together with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue; in whose service does it work? In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourishment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the _ascent of the line of Life._

That which is called "flesh" and "body" is of such incalculably greater importance, that the rest is nothing more than a small appurtenance. To continue the chain of life _so that it becomes ever more powerful_--that is the task.

But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue, and spirit together conspire formally to thwart this purpose: as _if they_ were the object of every endeavour! ... The _degeneration of life_ is essentially determined by the extraordinary _fallibility of consciousness,_ which is held at bay least of all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest and profoundest _errors._

Now could any more insane extravagance of vanity be imagined than to measure the _value_ of existence according to the _pleasant or unpleasant feelings of this consciousness_? It is obviously only a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are also no more than means.