The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
676.
_Concerning the Origin of our Valuations._ We are able to analyse our body, and by doing so we get the same idea of it as of the stellar system, and the differences between organic and inorganic lapses. Formerly the movements of the stars were explained as the effects of beings consciously pursuing a purpose: this is no longer required, and even in regard to the movements of the body and its changes, the belief has long since been abandoned that they can be explained by an appeal to a consciousness which has a determined purpose. By far the greater number of movements have nothing to do with consciousness at all: _neither have they anything to do with sensation._ Sensations and thoughts are extremely _rare_ and _insignificant_ things compared with the innumerable phenomena occurring every second. On the other hand, we believe that a certain conformity of means to ends rules over the very smallest phenomenon, which it is quite beyond our deepest science to understand; a sort of cautiousness, selectiveness, co-ordination, and repairing process, etc. In short, we are in the presence of an _activity_ to which it would be necessary to ascribe an _incalculably higher and more extensive intellect_ than the one we are acquainted with. We learn to _think less of_ all that is conscious: we unlearn the habit of making ourselves responsible for ourselves, because, as conscious beings fixing purposes, we are but the smallest part of ourselves.
Of the numerous influences taking effect every second, for instance, air, electricity, we feel scarcely anything at all. There might be a number of forces, which, though they never make themselves felt by us, yet influence us continually. Pleasure and pain are very rare and scanty phenomena, compared with the countless stimuli with which a cell or an organ operates upon another cell or organ. It is the phase of the _modesty of consciousness._ Finally, we can grasp the conscious ego itself, merely as an instrument in the service of that higher and more extensive intellect: and then we may ask whether all conscious _willing,_ all conscious _purposes,_ all _valuations,_ are not perhaps only means by virtue of which something essentially _different is attained,_ from that which consciousness supposes. We _mean_: it is a question of our _pleasure_ and _pain_ but pleasure and pain might be the means whereby we _had something to do_ which lies outside our consciousness.
This is to show how very _superficial_ all conscious phenomena really are; how an action and the image of it differ; how _little_ we know about what _precedes_ an action; how fantastic our feelings, "freewill," and "cause and effect" are; how thoughts and images, just like words, are only signs of thoughts; the impossibility of finding the grounds of any action; the superficiality of all praise and blame; how _essentially our_ conscious life is composed of _fancies_ and _illusion_; how all our words merely stand for fancies (our emotions too), and how the _union of mankind_ depends upon the transmission and continuation of these fancies: whereas, at bottom, the real union of mankind by means of procreation pursues its unknown way. Does this belief in the common fancies of men really _alter_ mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? _Are there_ really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than _mirage_? Even when values seem to _determine_ the actions of a man, they are, as a matter of fact, doing something quite different! In short, granting that a certain conformity of means to end might be demonstrated in the action of nature, without the assumption of a ruling ego: could not _our_ notion of purposes, and our will, etc., be only a _symbolic language_ standing for something quite different--that is to say, something not-willing and unconscious? only the thinnest semblance of that natural conformity of means to end in the organic world, but not in any way different therefrom?
Briefly, perhaps the whole of mental development is a matter of the _body:_ it is the consciously recorded history of the fact that a _higher body is forming._ The organic ascends to higher regions. Our longing to know Nature is a means by virtue of which the body would reach perfection. Or, better still, hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to alter the nourishment and the mode of living of the _body_: the body's consciousness and valuations, its kinds of pleasure and pain, are _signs of these changes and experiments. In the end, it is not a question concerning man; for he must be surpassed._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.