The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
485.
The concept _substance_ is an outcome of the concept _subject,_ and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, the subject, the very conditions for the concept "substance" are lacking. _Degrees of Being_ are obtained, but Being is lost. Criticism of "_reality_": what does a _"plus or minus of reality"_ lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe? The degree of our feeling of _life_ and _power_ (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of "Being," "reality," "non-appearance." _Subject i_ this is the term we apply to our belief in an _entity_ underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality; we regard this belief as the effect of a cause,--and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine "truth," "reality," "substantiality."--a "Subject" is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first _created_ the "similarity" of these states; the similising and adjusting of them is the _fact--not_ their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied). One would have to know what _Being_ is, in order to be able to _decide_ whether this or that is real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness"); it would also be necessary to know what _certainty_ and _knowledge_ are, and so forth.--But, as we do _not_ know these things, a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is nonsensical: how is it possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even define itself!
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