Part 12

"True"--from the standpoint of sentiment--is that which most provokes sentiment ("I");

from the standpoint of thought--is that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength;

from the standpoint of touch, sight, and hearing--is that which calls forth the greatest resistance.

Thus it is the highest degrees of activity which awaken belief in regard to the object, in regard to its "reality." The sensations of strength, struggle, and resistance convince the subject that there is something which is being resisted.

534.

The criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power.

535.

According to my way of thinking, "truth" does not necessarily mean the opposite of error, but, in the most fundamental cases, merely the relation of different errors to each other: thus one error might be older, deeper than another, perhaps altogether ineradicable, one without which organic creatures like ourselves could not exist; whereas other errors might not tyrannise over us to that extent as conditions of existence, but when measured according to the standard of those other "tyrants," could even be laid aside and "refuted." Why should an irrefutable assumption necessarily be "true"? This question may exasperate the logicians who limit things according to the limitations they find in themselves: but I have long since declared war with this logician's optimism.

536.

Everything simple is simply imaginary, but not "true." That which is real and true is, however, neither a unity nor reducible to a unity.

537.

What is truth?--Inertia; that hypothesis which brings satisfaction, the smallest expense of intellectual strength, etc.

538.

First proposition. The easier way of thinking always triumphs over the more difficult way;--dogmatically: simplex sigillum veri.--Dico: to suppose that clearness is any proof of truth, is absolute childishness. . . .

Second proposition. The teaching of Being, of things, and of all those constant entities, is a hundred times more easy than the teaching of Becoming and of evolution. . .

Third proposition. Logic was intended to be a method of facilitating thought: a means of expression, --not truth. . . . Later on it got to act like truth. . . .

539.

Parmenides said: "One can form no concept of the non-existent";--we are at the other extreme, and say, "That Of which a concept can be formed, is certainly fictional."

540.

There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes--therefore there must be many kinds of "truths," and consequently there can be no truth.

541.

Inscriptions over the porch of a modern lunatic asylum.

"That which is necessarily true in thought must be necessarily true in morality."--HERBERT SPENCER.

"The ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negation,"--HERBERT SPENCER.

542.

If the character of existence were false,:--and this would be possible,--what would truth then be, all our truth? ... An unprincipled falsification of the false? A higher degree of falseness? ...

543.

In a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an anti-natural tendency: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a higher degree of falsity. For a world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created (it being understood that he must believe himself to be "truthful").