The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
507.
The _valuation_, "I believe that this and that is so," is the essence of "truth." In all valuations, the conditions of _preservation_ and of _growth_ find expression. All our _organs and senses_ of knowledge have been developed only in view of the conditions of preservation and growth. The _trust_ in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the _valuation_ of logic, prove only that _experience_ has taught the usefulness of these things to life: not their "truth." The prerequisites of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that _there should be no doubt_ at all concerning all essential values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true, _not_ that it _is_ true. "The _real_ world and the world of _appearance_"-- I trace this contrast to the _relation of values._ We have posited _our_ conditions of existence as the _attributes of being_ in general. Owing to the fact that, in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief, we developed the idea that the real world was neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a world of _being._ _(e)_ The Origin of Reason and Logic. Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished--and are still perishing.
The kingdom of desires out of which logic grew: the gregarious instinct in the background. The assumption of similar facts is the first condition for "similar souls." _For the purpose of mutual understanding and government._ Concerning the _origin of logic._ The fundamental proneness to _equalise_ things and to _see them equal_, gets to be modified, and kept within bounds, by the consideration of what is useful or harmful--in fact, by considerations of success: it then becomes adapted in suchwise as to be gratified in a milder way, without at the same time denying life or endangering it. This whole process corresponds entirely with that external and mechanical process (which is its symbol) by which the _protoplasm_ continually assimilates, makes equal to itself, what it appropriates, and arranges it according to its own forms and requirements. Likeness and Similarity. 1. The coarser the organ the more apparent likenesses it sees; 2. The mind _will_ have likeness--that is to say, the identification of one sensual impression with others already experienced: just as the body _assimilates_ inorganic matter. For the understanding of Logic:-- _The will which tends to see likeness everywhere is the will to power_--the belief that something is so and so (the essence of a judgment), is the result of a will which _would fain have it_ as similar as possible.
Logic is bound up with the proviso: granted _that identical cases exist_. As a matter of fact, before one can think and conclude in a logical fashion, _this_ condition _must_ first be assumed. That is to say, the will to _logical truth_ cannot be consummated before a fundamental falsification of all phenomena has been assumed. From which it follows that an instinct rules here, which is capable of employing both means: first, falsification; and secondly, the carrying out of its own point of view: logic does not spring from a will to truth. The inventive force which devised the categories, worked in the service of our need of security, of quick intelligibility, in the form of signs, sounds, and abbreviations.--"Substance," "subject," "object," "Being," "Becoming," are not matters of metaphysical truth. It was the powerful who made the names of things into law, and, among the powerful, it was the greatest artists in abstraction who created the categories.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.