Part 27

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?

625.

The mechanical concept of "movement" is already a translation of the original process into the language of symbols of the eye and the touch.

The concept atom, the distinction between the "seat of a motive force and the force itself," is a language of symbols derived from our logical and physical world.

It does not lie within our power to alter our means of expression: it is possible to understand to what extend they are but symptomatic. To demand an adequate means of expression is nonsense: it lies at the heart of a language, of a medium of communication, to express relation only.... The concept "truth" is opposed to good sense. The whole province of truth--falseness only applies to the relations between beings, not to an "absolute." There is no such thing as a "being in itself" (relations in the first place constitute being), any more than there can be "knowledge in itself."

626.

"The feeling of force cannot proceed from movement: feeling in general cannot proceed from movement."

"Even in support of this, an apparent experience is the only evidence: in a substance (brain) feeling is generated through transmitted motion (stimuli). But generated? Would this show that the feeling did not yet exist there at all? so that its appearance would have to be regarded as the creative act of the intermediary--motion? The feelingless condition of this substance is only an hypothesis! not an experience! Feeling, therefore is the quality of the substance: there actually are substances that feel."

"Do we learn from certain substances that they have no feeling? No, we merely cannot tell that they have any. It is impossible to seek the origin of feeling in non-sensitive substance."--Oh what hastiness!

627.

"To attract" and "to repel", in a purely mechanical sense, is pure fiction: a word. We cannot imagine an attraction without a purpose.-- Either the will to possess one's self of a thing, or the will to defend one's self from a thing or to repel it--that we "understand"; that would be an interpretation which we could use.

In short, the psychological necessity of believing in causality lies in the impossibility of imagining a process without a purpose: but of course this says nothing concerning truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief)! The belief in causæ collapses with the belief in τέλει (against Spinoza and his causationism).

628.

It is an illusion to suppose that something is known, when all we have is a mathematical formula of what has happened; it is only characterised, described; no more!

629.

If I bring a regularly recurring phenomenon into a formula, I have facilitated and shortened my task of characterising the whole phenomenon, etc. But I have not thereby ascertained a "law," I have only replied to the question: How is it that something recurs here? It is a supposition that the formula corresponds to a complex of really unknown forces and the discharge of forces; it is pure mythology to suppose that forces here obey a law, so that, as the result of their obedience, we have the same phenomenon every time.

630.

I take good care not to speak of chemical "laws": to do so savours of morality. It is much more a question of establishing certain relations of power: the stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot maintain its degree of independence,--here there is no pity, no quarter, and, still less, any observance of "law."

631.

The unalterable sequence of certain phenomena does not prove any "law," but a relation of power between two or more forces. To say, "But it is precisely this relation that remains the same!" is no better than saying, "One and the same force cannot be another force."--It is not a matter of sequence, but a matter of interdependence, a process in which the procession of moments do not determine each other after the manner of cause and effect....

The separation of the "action" from the "agent"; of the phenomenon from the worker of that phenomenon: of the process from one that is not process, but lasting, substance, thing, body, soul, etc.; the attempt to understand a life as a sort of shifting of things and a changing of places; of a sort of "being" or stable entity: this ancient mythology established the belief in "cause and effect," once it had found a lasting form in the functions of speech and grammar.

632.

The "regularity" of a sequence is only a metaphorical expression, not a fact, just as if a rule were followed here! And the same holds good of "conformity to law." We find a formula in order to express an ever-recurring kind of succession of phenomena: but that does not show that we have discovered a law; much less a force which is the cause of a recurrence of effects. The fact that something always happens thus or thus, is interpreted here as if a creature always acted thus or thus as the result of obedience to a law or to a lawgiver: whereas apart from the "law" it would be free to act differently. But precisely that inability to act otherwise might originate in the creature itself, it might be that it did not act thus or thus in response to a law, but simply because it was so constituted. It would mean simply: that something cannot also be something else; that it cannot be first this, and then something quite different; that it is neither free nor the reverse, but merely thus or thus. The fault lies in thinking a subject into things.

633.

To speak of two consecutive states, the first as "cause," and the second as "effect," is false. The first state cannot bring about anything, the second has nothing effected in it.

It is a question of a struggle between two elements unequal in power: a new adjustment is arrived at, according to the measure of power each possesses. The second state is something fundamentally different from the first (it is not its effect): the essential thing Is, that the factors which engage in the struggle leave it with different quanta of power.

634.

A. criticism of Materialism.--Let us dismiss the two popular concepts, Necessity and Law, from this idea: the first introduces a false constraint, the second a false liberty into the world. "Things" do not act regularly, they follow no rule: there are no things (that is our fiction); neither do they act in accordance with any necessity. There is no obedience here: for, the fact that something is as it is, strong or weak, is not the result of obedience or of a rule or of a constraint....