Part 25

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.

609.

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.

610.

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.

611.

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."

612.

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.

613.

The contest for supremacy among the passions, and the dominion of one of the passions over the intellect.

614.

To "humanise" the world means to feel ourselves ever more and more masters upon earth.

615.

Knowledge, among a higher class of beings, will also take new forms which are not yet necessary.

616.

That the worth of the world lies in our interpretations (that perhaps yet other interpretations are possible somewhere, besides mankind's); that the interpretations made hitherto were perspective valuations, by means of which we were able to survive in life, i.e. in the Will to Power and in the growth of power; that every elevation of man involves the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every higher degree of strength or power attained, brings new views in its train, and teaches a belief in new horizons--these doctrines lie scattered through all my works. The world that concerns us at all is false--that is to say, is not a fact; but a romance, a piece of human sculpture, made from a meagre sum of observation; it is "in flux"; it is something that evolves, a great revolving lie continually moving onwards and never getting any nearer to truth--for there is no such thing as "truth."

617.

Recapitulation:--

To stamp Becoming with the character of Being--this is the highest Will to Power.

The twofold falsification, by the senses on the one hand, by the intellect on the other, with the view of maintaining a world of being, of rest, of equivalent cases, etc.

That everything recurs, is the very nearest approach of a world of Becoming to a world of Being, the height of contemplation.

It is out of the values which have been attributed to Being, that the condemnation of, and dissatisfaction with, Becoming, have sprung: once such a world of Being had been invented.

The metamorphoses of Being (body, God, ideas, natural laws, formulæ, etc.).

"Being" as appearance the twisting round of values: appearance was that which conferred the values.