Part 28

The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power--this is the question around which all phenomena turn: if we, for our own purposes and calculations, know how to express this in formulas and "laws," all the better for us! But that does not mean that we have introduced any "morality" into the world, just because we have fancied it as obedient.

There are no laws: every power draws its last consequence at every moment. Things are calculable precisely owing to the fact that there is no possibility of their being otherwise than they are.

A quantum of power is characterised by the effect it produces and the influence it resists. The adiaphoric state which would be thinkable in itself, is entirely lacking. It is essentially a will to violence and a will to defend one's self against violence. It is not self-preservation: every atom exercises its influence over the whole of existence--it is thought out of existence if one thinks this radiation of will-power away. That is why I call it a quantum of "Will to Power"; with this formula one can express the character which cannot be abstracted in thought from mechanical order, without suppressing the latter itself in thought.

The translation of the world of effect into a visible world--a world for the eye--is the concept "movement." Here it is always understood that something has been moved,--whether it be the fiction of an atomic globule or even of the abstraction of the latter, the dynamic atom, something is always imagined that has an effect--that is to say, we have not yet rid ourselves of the habit into which our senses and speech inveigled us. Subject and object, an agent to the action, the action and that which does it separated: we must not forget that all this signifies no more than semeiotics and--nothing real. Mechanics as a teaching of movement is already a translation of phenomena into man's language of the senses.

635.

We are in need of "unities" in order to be able to reckon: but this is no reason for supposing that "unities" actually exist. We borrowed the concept "unity" from our concept "ego,"--our very oldest article of faith. If we did not believe ourselves to be unities we should never have formed the concept "thing." Now--that is to say, somewhat late in the day, we are overwhelmingly convinced that our conception of the concept "ego" is no security whatever for a real entity. In order to maintain the mechanical interpretation of the world theoretically, we must always make the reserve that it is with fictions that we do so: the concept of movement (derived from the language of our senses) and the concept of the atom (= entity, derived from our psychical experience) are based upon a sense-prejudice and a psychological prejudice.

Mechanics formulates consecutive phenomena, and it does so semeiologically, in the terms of the senses and of the mind (that all influence is movement; that where there is movement something is at work moving): it does not touch the question of the causal force.

The mechanical world is imagined as the eye and the sense of touch alone could imagine a world (as "moved"),--in such a way as to be calculable,--as to simulate causal entities "things" (atoms) whose effect is constant (the transfer of the false concept of subject to the concept atom).

The mixing together of the concept of numbers, of the concept of thing (the idea of subject), of the concept of activity (the separation of that which is the cause, and the effect), of the concept of movement: all these things are phenomenal; our eye and our psychology are still in it all.

If we eliminate these adjuncts, nothing remains over but dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: the essence of which resides in their relation to all other quanta, in their "influence" upon the latter. The will to power, not Being, not Becoming, but a pathos--is the elementary fact, from these first results a Becoming, an influencing....

636.

The physicists believe in a "true world" after their own kind; a fixed systematising of atoms to perform necessary movements, and holding good equally of all creatures, so that, according to them, the "world of appearance" reduces itself to the side of general and generally-needed Being, which is accessible to every one according to his kind (accessible and also adjusted,--made "subjective"). But here they are in error. The atom which they postulate is arrived at by the logic of that perspective of consciousness; it is in itself therefore a subjective fiction. This picture of the world which they project is in no way essentially different from the subjective picture: the only difference is, that it is composed simply with more extended senses, but certainly with our senses.... And in the end, without knowing it, they left something out of the constellation: precisely the necessary perspective factor, by means of which every centre of power--and not man alone--constructs the rest of the world from its point of view--that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength.... They forgot to reckon with this perspective-fixing power, in "true being,"--or, in school-terms, subject-being. They suppose that this was "evolved" and added;--but even the chemical investigator needs it: it is indeed specific Being, which determines action and reaction according to circumstances.

Perspectivity is only a complex form, of specificness. My idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. But inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by "combining" with those) which are sufficiently related to it--and thus they conspire together for power. And the process continues.

637.

Even in the inorganic world all that concerns an atom of energy is its immediate neighbourhood: distant forces balance each other. Here is the root of perspectivity, and it explains why a living organism is "egoistic" to the core.

638.

Granting that the world disposed of a quantum of force, it is obvious that any transposition of force to any place would affect the whole system--thus, besides the causality of sequence, there would also be a dependence, contiguity, and coincidence.

639.

The only possible way of upholding the sense of the concept "God" would be: to make Him not the motive force, but the condition of maximum power, an epoch; a point in the further development of the Will to Power; by means of which subsequent evolution just as much as former evolution--up to Him--could be explained.

Viewed mechanically, the energy of collective Becoming remains constant; regarded from the economical standpoint, it ascends to its zenith and then recedes therefrom in order to remain eternally rotatory. This "Will to Power" expresses itself in the interpretation in the manner in which the strength is used.--The conversion of energy into life; "life in its highest power" thenceforward appears as the goal. The same amount of energy, at different stages of development, means different things.

That which determines growth in Life is the economy which becomes ever more sparing and methodical, which achieves ever more and more with a steadily decreasing amount of energy.... The ideal is the principle of the least possible expense....

The only thing that is proved is that the world is not striving towards a state of stability. Consequently its zenith must not be conceived as a state of absolute equilibrium....

The dire necessity of the same things happening in the course of the world, as in all other things, is not an eternal determinism reigning over all phenomena, but merely the expression of the fact that the impossible is not possible; that a given force cannot be different from that given force; that a given quantity of resisting force does not manifest itself otherwise than in conformity with its degree of strength;--to speak of events as being necessary is tautological.

2. The Will to Power as Life.

(a) The Organic Process.

640.

Man imagines that he was present at the generation of the organic world: what was there to be observed, with the eyes and the touch, in regard to these processes? How much of it can be put into round numbers? What rules are noticeable in the movements? Thus, man would fain arrange all phenomena as if they were for the eye and for the touch, as if they were forms of motion: he will discover formules wherewith to simplify the unwieldy mass of these experiences.

The reduction of all phenomena to the level of men with senses and with mathematics. It is a matter of making an inventory of human experiences: granting that man, or rather the human eye and the ability to form concepts, have been the eternal witnesses of all things.