The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
608.
The development of science tends ever more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is to do the _reverse,_ and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the unknown to the known. In short, science is laying the road to _sovereign ignorance,_ to a feeling that "knowledge" does not exist at all, that it was merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing; further, that we have not preserved the smallest notion which would allow us to class knowledge even as a _possibility_ that "knowledge" is a contradictory idea. We _transfer_ a primeval myth and piece of human vanity into the land of hard facts: we can _allow_ a thing-in-itself as a concept, just as little as we can _allow_ "knowledge-in-itself." The _misleading_ influence of "numbers and logic," the misleading influence of "laws." _Wisdom_ is an attempt to _overcome_ the perspective valuations (_i.e._ the "will to power"): it is a principle which is both unfriendly to Life, and also decadent; a symptom in the case of the Indians, etc.; _weakness_ of the power of appropriation. It does not suffice for you to see in what ignorance man and beast now live; you must also have and learn the _desire_ for _ignorance._ It is necessary that you should know that without this form of ignorance life itself would be impossible, that it is merely a vital condition under which, alone, a living organism can preserve itself and prosper: a great solid belt of ignorance must stand about you.
Science--the transformation of Nature into concepts for the purpose of governing Nature--that is part of the rubric _means._ But the _purpose_ and _will_ of mankind must grow in the same way, the intention in regard to the whole. _Thought_ is the strongest and most persistently exercised function in all stages of life--and also in every act of perception or apparent experience! Obviously it soon becomes the _mightiest_ and _most exacting_ of all functions, and in time tyrannises over other powers. Ultimately it becomes "passion in itself." The right to great passion must be reclaimed for the investigator, after self-effacement and the cult of "objectivity" have created a false order of rank in this sphere. Error reached its zenith when Schopenhauer taught: _in the release from passion and_ in will alone lay the road to "truth," to knowledge; the intellect freed from will _could not help_ seeing the true and actual essence of things. The same error in art: as if everything became _beautiful_ the moment it was regarded without will. The contest for supremacy among the passions, and the dominion of one of the passions over the intellect. To "humanise" the world means to feel ourselves ever more and more masters upon earth. Knowledge, among a higher class of beings, will also take new forms which are not yet necessary.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.