The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
568.
A criticism of the concept "_real and apparent_ world."--Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things. Appearance itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; _i.e._ in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of _identical_ cases must first be created through _appearance;_ a _tempo_ in which observation and comparison is possible, etc. "Appearance" is an adjusted and simplified world, in which our _practical_ instincts have worked: for us it is perfectly true: for we _live_ in it, we can live in it: _this is the proof_ of its truth as far as we are concerned.... The world, apart from the fact that we have to live in it--the world, which we have _not_ adjusted to our being, our logic, and our psychological prejudices--does _not_ exist as a world "in-itself"; it is essentially a world of relations: under certain circumstances it has a _different aspect_ from every different point at which it is seen: it presses against every point, and every point resists it--and these collective relations are in every case _incongruent._ The _measure of power_ determines what _being_ possesses the other measure of power: under what form, force, or constraint, it acts or resists. Our particular case is interesting enough: we have created a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to enable us to _endure_ life in that world....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.