The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
531.
_Judging_ is our oldest faith; it is our habit of believing this to be true or false, of asserting or denying, our certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, our belief that we really "know"--_what_ is believed to be true in all judgments? What are _attributes_?--We did not regard changes in ourselves merely as such, but as "things in themselves," which are strange to us, and which we only "perceive"; and we did _not_ class them as phenomena, but as Being, as "attributes"; and in addition we invented a creature to which they attach themselves--that is to say, we made the _effect_ the _working cause,_ and _the latter_ we made _Being._ But even in this plain statement, the concept "effect" is arbitrary: for in regard to those changes which occur in us, and of which we are convinced we ourselves are _not_ the cause, we still argue that they must be effects: and this is in accordance with the belief that "every change must have its author";--but this belief in itself is already mythology; for it _separates_ the working _cause from_ the cause in work. When I say the "lightning flashes," I set the flash down, once as an action and a second time as a subject acting; and thus a thing is fancifully affixed to a phenomenon, which is not one with it, but which is _stable,_ which _is,_ and does not "come."--_To make the phenomenon the working cause,_ and to make _the effect into a thing--into Being:_ this is the _double_ error, or _interpretation,_ of which we are guilty.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.