The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
619.
The triumphant concept "_energy_" with which our physicists created God and the world, needs yet to be completed: it must be given an inner will which I characterise as the "_Will to Power_"--that is to say, as an insatiable desire to manifest power; or the application and exercise of power as a creative instinct, etc. Physicists cannot get rid of the "_actio in distans_" in their principles; any more than they can a repelling force (or an attracting one). There is no help for it, all movements, all "appearances," all "laws" must be understood as _symptoms_ of an _inner_ phenomenon, and the analogy of man must be used for this purpose. It is possible to trace all the instincts of an animal to the will to power; as also all the functions of organic life to this one source. Has anybody ever been able to testify to a _force!_ No, but to _effects,_ translated into a completely strange language. Regularity in sequence has so spoilt us, _that we no longer wonder at the wonderful process._ A force of which we cannot form any idea, is an empty word, and ought to have no civic rights in the city of science: and the same applies to the purely mechanical powers of attracting and repelling by means of which we can form an image of the world--no more!
_Squeezes and kicks_ are something incalculably recent, evolved and not primeval. They presuppose something which holds together and _can_ press and strike! But how could it hold together? There is nothing _unalterable_ in chemistry: this is only appearance, a mere school prejudice. We it was who _introduced_ the unalterable, taking it from metaphysics as usual, Mr. Chemist. It is a mere superficial judgment to declare that the diamond, graphite, and carbon are identical. Why? Simply because no loss of substance can be traced in the scales! Well then, at least they have something in common; but the work of the molecules in the process of changing from one form to the other, an action we can neither see nor weigh, is just exactly what makes one material something different--with specifically different qualities. _Against_ the physical _atom._--In order to understand the world, we must be able to reckon it up; in order to be able to reckon it up, we must be aware of constant causes; but since we find no such constant causes in reality, we _invent_ them for ourselves and call them atoms. This is the origin of the atomic theory. The possibility of calculating the world, the possibility of expressing all phenomena by means of formulæ--is that really "understanding"? What would be understood of a piece of music, if all that were calculable in it and capable of being expressed in formulas, were reckoned up?--Thus "constant causes", things, substances, something "unconditioned," were therefore _invented_;--what has been attained thereby?
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