The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
532.
The _Judgment_--that is the faith: "This and this is so. In every judgment, therefore, there lies the admission that an "identical" case has been met with: it thus takes some sort of comparison for granted, with the help of the memory. Judgment does _not_ create the idea that an identical case seems to be there. It believes rather that it actually perceives such a case; it works on the hypothesis that there are such things as identical cases. But what is that much _older_ function called, which must have been active much earlier, and which in itself equalises unequal cases and makes them alike? What is that second function called, which with this first one as a basis, etc. etc, "That which provokes the same sensations as another thing is equal to that other thing": but what is that called which makes sensations equal, which regards them as equal?--There could be no judgments if a sort of equalising process were not active within all sensations: memory is only possible by means of the underscoring of all that has already been experienced and learned. Before a judgment can be formed, _the process of assimilation must already have been completed_: thus, even here, an intellectual activity is to be observed which does not enter consciousness in at all the same way as the pain which accompanies a wound. Probably the psychic phenomena correspond to all the organic functions--that is to say, they consist of assimilation, rejection, growth, etc.
The essential thing is to start out from the body and to use it as the general clue. It is by far the richer phenomenon, and allows of much more accurate observation. The belief in the body is much more soundly established than the belief in spirit. "However strongly a thing may be believed, the degree of belief is no criterion of its truth." But what is truth? Perhaps it is a form of faith, which has become a condition of existence? Then _strength_ would certainly be a criterion; for instance, in regard to causality.
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