The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
579.
_Concerning the psychology of metaphysics._--This world is only apparent: _therefore_ there must be a real world;--this world is conditioned: _consequently_ there must be an unconditioned world;--this world is contradictory: _consequently_ there is a world free from contradiction;--this world is evolving: _consequently_ there is somewhere a static world:--a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also _exist_). Pain _inspires these conclusions_: at bottom they are _withes_ that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is likewise revealed by the fact that another and _better_ world is imagined: the _resentment_ of the metaphysician against reality is creative here. _The second_ series of questions: _wherefore_ suffer? ... and from this a conclusion is derived concerning the relation of the real world to our apparent, changing, suffering, and contradictory world: (1) Suffering as the consequence of error: how is error possible? (2) Suffering as the consequence of guilt: how is guilt possible? (A host of experiences drawn from the sphere of nature or society, universalised and made absolute.) But if the conditioned world be causally determined by the unconditioned, then the _freedom to err, to be sinful,_ must also be derived from the same quarter: and once more the question arises, _to what purpose?_ ... The world of appearance, of Becoming, of contradiction, of suffering, is therefore _willed; to what purpose?_
The error of these conclusions; two contradictory concepts are formed--because one of them corresponds to a reality, the other "_must_" also correspond to a reality. "_Whence_" would one otherwise derive its contradictory concept? _Reason_ is thus a source of revelation concerning the absolute. But the _origin_ of the above contradictions _need not necessarily_ be a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose t_he real genesis_ of the concepts, this springs from practical spheres, from utilitarian spheres, hence the _strong faith_ it commands _(one is threatened with ruin_ if one's conclusions are not in conformity with this reason; but this fact is no "_proof_" of what the latter asserts). _The preoccupation of metaphysicians with pain,_ is quite artless. "Eternal blessedness": psychological nonsense. Brave and creative men never make pleasure and pain ultimate questions--they are incidental conditions: both of them must be desired when one _will attain to_ something. It is a sign of fatigue and illness in these metaphysicians and religious men, that they should press questions of pleasure and pain into the foreground. Even _morality_ in their eyes derives its great importance _only_ from the fact that it is regarded as an essential condition for abolishing pain. _The same holds good of the preoccupation with appearance and error_ the cause of pain. A superstition that happiness and truth are related (confusion: happiness in "certainty," in "faith").
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.