The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
492.
The body and physiology the starting-point: why?--We obtain a correct image of the nature of our subject-entity, that is to say, as a number of regents at the head of a community (not as "souls" or as "life-forces") as also of the dependence of these regents upon their subjects, and upon the conditions of a hierarchy, and of the division of labour, as the means ensuring the existence of the part and the whole. We also obtain a correct image of the way in which the living entities continually come into being and expire, and we see how eternity cannot belong to the "subject"; we realise that the struggle finds expression in obeying as well as in commanding, and that a fluctuating definition of the limits of power is a factor of life. The comparative _ignorance_ in which the ruler is kept, of the individual performances and even disturbances taking place in the community, also belong to the conditions under which government may be carried on. In short, we obtain a valuation even of _want-of-knowledge,_ of seeing-things-generally-as-a-whole, of simplification, of falsification, and of perspective. What is most important, however, is, that we regard the ruler and his subjects as of the _same kind,_ all feeling, willing, thinking--and that wherever we see or suspect movement in a body, we conclude that there is co-operative-subjective and invisible life. Movement as a symbol for the eye; it denotes that something has been felt, willed, thought.
The danger of directly questioning the subject _concerning_ the subject, and all spiritual self-reflection, consists in this, that it might be a necessary condition of its activity to interpret itself _erroneously._ That is why we appeal to the body and lay the evidence of sharpened senses aside: or we try and see whether the subjects themselves cannot enter into communication with us. _(d)_ Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge. Perspectivity. _Truth is that kind of error_ without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. The value for _Life_ is ultimately decisive. It is unlikely that our "knowledge" extends farther than is exactly necessary for our self-preservation. Morphology shows us how the senses and the nerves as well as the brain evolve in proportion as the difficulties of acquiring sustenance increase. If the morality of "Thou shalt not lie" be refuted, the sense for truth will then have to justify itself before another tribunal--as a means to the preservation of man, _as Will to Power._ Likewise our love of the beautiful: it is also the _creative will._ Both senses stand side by side; the sense of truth is the means wherewith the power is appropriated to adjust things according to one's taste. The love of adjusting and reforming--a primeval love! We can only _take cognisance_ of a world which we ourselves have _made._
Concerning the multifariousness of knowledge. The tracing of _its_ relation to many other things (or the relation of kind)--how should "knowledge" be of another? The way to know and to investigate is in itself among the conditions of life; that is why the conclusion that there could be no other kind of intellect (for ourselves) than the kind which serves the purpose of our preservation is an excessively hasty one: this _actual_ condition may be only an accidental, not in the least an essential; one. Our apparatus for acquiring knowledge is not adjusted for knowledge. _The most strongly credited a priori "truths" are, to my mind, mere assumptions pending further investigation_; for instance, the law of causation is a belief so thoroughly acquired by practice and so completely assimilated, that to disbelieve in it would mean the ruin of our kind. But is it therefore true? What an extraordinary conclusion! As if truth were proved by the mere fact that man survives! To what extent is our _intellect_ also a result of the conditions of life?--We should not have it did we not _need_ to have it, and we should not have it _as_ we have it, if we did not need it _as_ we need it--that is to say, if we could live otherwise. Thinking in a primitive (inorganic) state is to _persevere in forms,_ as in the case of the crystal.--In _our_ thought, the _essential factor_ is the harmonising of the new material with the old schemes (= Procrustes' bed), the _assimilation_ of the unfamiliar.
The perception of the senses projected outwards: "inwards" and "outwards"--does the _body_ command here? The same equalising and ordering power which rules in the idioplasma, also rules in the incorporation of the outer world: our sensual perceptions are already the _result_ of this process of _adaptation_ and _harmonisation_ in regard to _all_ the past in us; they do not follow directly upon the "impression." All thought, judgment, perception, regarded as an act of _comparing_[2] has as a first condition the act of _equalising,_ and earlier still the act of _"making equal."_ The process of making equal is the same as the assimilation by the amœba of the nutritive matter it appropriates. "Memory" late, in so far as the equalising instinct appears to have been _subdued_: the difference is preserved. Memory--a process of classification and collocation; active--who? In regard to the _memory,_ we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a "soul," which, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live "in the memory"; I have nothing to do with it when memory "comes," my will is inactive in regard to it, as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which I become conscious: now something similar comes--who has called it forth? Who has awakened it?
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. _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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.