Part 5

480.

There are no such things as "mind," reason, thought, consciousness, soul, will, or truth: they all belong to fiction, and can serve no purpose. It is not a question of "subject and object," but of a particular species of animal which can prosper only by means of a certain exactness, or, better still, regularity in recording its perceptions (in order that experience may be capitalised)....

Knowledge works as an instrument of power. It is therefore obvious that it increases with each advance of power....

The purpose of knowledge: in this case, as in the case of "good" or "beautiful," the concept must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation--and not some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception--stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge; ... they evolve in such a way that their observations may suffice for our preservation. In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the Will to Power grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality, in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount in its service.

(c) The Belief in the "Ego." Subject.

481.

In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. "Everything is subjective," ye say: but that in itself is interpretation. The subject is nothing given, but something superimposed by fancy, something introduced behind.--Is it necessary to set an interpreter behind the interpretation already to hand? Even that would be fantasy, hypothesis.

To the extent to which knowledge has any sense at all, the world is knowable: but it may be interpreted differently, it has not one sense behind it, but hundreds of senses.--"Perspectivity."

It is our needs that interpret the world; our instincts and their impulses for and against. Every instinct is a sort of thirst for power; each has its point of view, which it would fain impose upon all the other instincts as their norm.

482.

Where our ignorance really begins, at that point from which we can see no further, we set a word; for instance, the word "I," the word "do," the word "suffer"--these concepts may be the horizon lines of our knowledge, but they are not "truths."

483.

Owing to the phenomenon "thought," the ego is taken for granted; but up to the present everybody believed, like the people, that there was something unconditionally certain in the notion "I think," and that by analogy with our understanding of all other causal reactions this "I" was the given cause of the thinking. However customary and indispensable this fiction may have become now, this fact proves nothing against the imaginary nature of its origin; it might be a life-preserving belief and still be false.

484.

"Something is thought, therefore there is something that thinks": this is what Descartes' argument amounts to. But this is tantamount to considering our belief in the notion "substance" as an "a priori" truth:--that there must be something "that thinks" when we think, is merely a formulation of a grammatical custom which sets an agent to every action. In short, a metaphysico-logical postulate is already put forward here--and it is not merely an ascertainment of fact.... On Descartes' lines nothing absolutely certain is attained, but only the fact of a very powerful faith.

If the proposition be reduced to "Something is thought, therefore there are thoughts," the result is mere tautology; and precisely the one factor which is in question, the "reality of thought," is not touched upon,--so that, in this form, the apparitional character of thought cannot be denied. What Descartes wanted to prove was, that thought not only had apparent reality, but absolute reality.

485.

The concept substance is an outcome of the concept subject, and not conversely! If we surrender the concept soul, the subject, the very conditions for the concept "substance" are lacking. Degrees of Being are obtained, but Being is lost.

Criticism of "reality": what does a "plus or minus of reality" lead to, the gradation of Being in which we believe?

The degree of our feeling of life and power (the logic and relationship of past life) presents us with the measure of "Being," "reality," "non-appearance."

Subject i this is the term we apply to our belief in an entity underlying all the different moments of the most intense sensations of reality; we regard this belief as the effect of a cause,--and we believe in our belief to such an extent that, on its account alone, we imagine "truth," "reality," "substantiality."--a "Subject" is the fiction which would fain make us believe that several similar states were the effect of one substratum: but we it was who first created the "similarity" of these states; the similising and adjusting of them is the fact--not their similarity (on the contrary, this ought rather to be denied).

486.

One would have to know what Being is, in order to be able to decide whether this or that is real (for instance, "the facts of consciousness"); it would also be necessary to know what certainty and knowledge are, and so forth.--But, as we do not know these things, a criticism of the faculty of knowledge is nonsensical: how is it possible for an instrument to criticise itself, when it is itself that exercises the critical faculty. It cannot even define itself!

487.

Should not all philosophy ultimately disclose the first principles on which the reasoning processes depend?--that is to say, our belief in the "ego" as a substance, as the only reality according to which, alone, we are able to ascribe reality to things? The oldest realism at length comes to light, simultaneously with man's recognition of the fact that his whole religious history is no more than a history of soul-superstitions. Here there is a barrier; our very thinking, itself, involves that belief (with its distinctions--substance, accident, action, agent, etc.); to abandon it would mean to cease from being able to think.

But that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we must believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities.

488.

The psychological origin of our belief in reason.--The ideas "reality," "Being," are derived from our subject-feeling.