Part 16

562.

"At some time in the development of thought, a point must have been reached when man became conscious of the fact that what he called the qualities of a thing were merely the sensations of the feeling subject: and thus the qualities ceased from belonging to the thing." The "thing-in-itself" remained over. 'The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-us, is based upon that older and artless observation which would fain grant energy to things: but analysis revealed that even force was only ascribed to them by our fancy, as was also--substance. "The thing affects a subject?" Thus the root of the idea of substance is in language, not in things outside ourselves! The thing-in-itself is not a problem at all!

Being will have to be conceived as a sensation which is no longer based upon anything quite devoid of sensation.

In movement no new meaning is given to feeling. That which is, cannot be the substance of movement: it is therefore a form of Being.

N.B.--The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede it (purposes);

Secondly, through mental images of phenomena which follow behind it (the mathematico-physical explanation).

The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which is the symbolisation of the world by means of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation: physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without feeling or purpose right up to the highest man. And teleology is only a history of purposes, and is never physical.

563.

Our method of acquiring "knowledge" is limited to a process of establishing quantities, but we can by no means help feeling the difference of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us; it is not a "thing-in-itself."

Our senses have a certain definite quantum as a mean, within the limits of which they perform their functions--that is to say, we become conscious of bigness and smallness in accordance with the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish--that is to say, we feel even proportions as qualities in regard to our possibilities of existence.

564.

But could not all quantities be merely tokens of qualities? Another consciousness and scale of desires must correspond to greater power in fact, another point of view; growth in itself is the expression of a desire to become more; the desire for a greater quantum springs from a certain quale, in a purely quantitative world, everything would be dead, stiff, and motionless.--The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: it is discovered that they can only stand together, an analogy--

565.

Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity--that is to say, as qualities, which we can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. But everything in regard to which the word "knowledge" has any sense at all, belongs to the realm of reckoning, weighing, and measuring, to quantity whereas, conversely, all our valuations (that is to say, our sensations) belong precisely to the realm of qualities, i.e. to those truths which belong to us alone and to our point of view, and which absolutely cannot be "known." It is obvious that every one of us, different creatures, must feel different qualities, and must therefore live in a different world from the rest. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy proper to human nature; the demand that these our human interpretations and values, should be general and perhaps real values, belongs to the hereditary madnesses of human pride.

566.

The "real world," in whatever form it has been conceived hitherto--was always the world of appearance over again.

567.

The world of appearance, i.e. a world regarded in the light of values; ordered, selected according to values--that is to say, in this case, according to the standpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and the increase of power of a certain species of animals.

It is the point of view, then, which accounts for the character of "appearance." As if a world could remain over, when the point of view is cancelled! By such means relativity would also be cancelled!

Every centre of energy has its point of view of the whole of the remainder of the world--that is to say, its perfectly definite valuation, its mode of action, its mode of resistance. The "world of appearance" is thus reduced to a specific kind of action on the world proceeding from a centre.

But there is no other kind of action: and the "world" is only a word for the collective play of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every isolated factor against the whole.

There no longer remains a shadow of a right to speak here of "appearance." ...

The specific way of reacting is the only way of reacting; we do not know how many kinds and what sort of kinds there are.

But there is no "other," no "real," no essential being,--for thus a world without action and reaction would be expressed....

The antithesis: world of appearance and real world, is thus reduced to the antitheses "world" and "nonentity."

568.

A criticism of the concept "real and apparent world."--Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things.

Appearance itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e. in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance; a tempo in which observation and comparison is possible, etc.