688.
_The unitary view of psychology._--We are accustomed to regard the
development of a vast number of forms as compatible with one single
origin.
My theory would be: that the will to power is the primitive motive
force out of which all other motives have been derived;
That it is exceedingly illuminating to substitute _power_ for
individual "happiness" (after which every living organism is said to
strive): "It strives after power, after _more_ power";--happiness is
only a symptom of the feeling of power attained, a consciousness of
difference (it does not strive after happiness: but happiness steps
in when the object is attained, after which the organism has striven:
happiness is an accompanying, not an actuating factor);
That all motive force is the will to power; that there is no other
force, either physical, dynamic, or psychic.
In our science, where the concept cause and effect is reduced to a
relationship of complete equilibrium, and in which it seems desirable
for the _same_ quantum of force to be found on either side, _all idea
of a motive power is absent_: we only apprehend results, and we call
these equal from the point of view of their content of force....
It is a matter of mere experience that change never ceases: at bottom
we have not the smallest grounds for assuming that any one particular
change must follow upon any other. On the contrary, any state which
has been attained would seem almost forced to maintain itself intact
if it had not within itself a capacity for not desiring to maintain
itself.... Spinoza's proposition concerning "self-preservation" ought
as a matter of fact to put a stop to change. But the proposition is
false; the contrary is true. In all living organisms it can be clearly
shown that they do everything not to remain as they are, but to become
greater....
689.
_"Will to power" and causality._--From a psychological point of view
the idea of "cause" is our feeling of power in the act which is called
willing--our concept effect is the superstition that this feeling of
power is itself the force which moves things....
A state which accompanies an event and is already an effect of
that event is deemed "sufficient cause" of the latter; the tense
relationship of our feeling of power (pleasure as the feeling of power)
and of an obstacle being overcome--are these things illusions?
If we translate the notion "cause" back into the only sphere which is
known to us, and out of which we have taken it, we cannot imagine _any
change_ in which the will to power is not inherent. We do not know how
to account for any change which is not a _trespassing_ of one power on
another.
Mechanics only show us the results, and then only in images (movement
is a figure of speech); gravitation itself has no mechanical cause,
because it is itself the first cause of mechanical results.
The will to _accumulate force_ is confined to the phenomenon of life,
to nourishment, to procreation, to inheritance, to society, states,
customs, authority. Should we not be allowed to assume that this will
is the motive power also of chemistry?--and of the cosmic order?
Not only conservation of energy, but the minimum amount of waste; so
that the only reality is this: _the will of every centre of power to
become stronger_--not self-preservation, but the desire to appropriate,
to become master, to become more, to become stronger.
Is the fact that science is possible a proof of the principle of
causation--"From like causes, like effects"--"A permanent law of
things"--"Invariable order"? Because something is calculable, is it
therefore on that account necessary?
If something happens thus, and thus only, it is not the manifestation
of a "principle," of a "law," of "order." What happens is that certain
quanta of power begin to operate, and their essence is to exercise
their power over all other quanta of power. Can we assume the existence
of a striving after power without a feeling of pleasure and pain,
_i.e._ without the sensation of an increase or a decrease of power?
Is mechanism only a language of signs for the concealed fact of a
world of fighting and conquering quanta of will-power? All mechanical
first-principles, matter, atoms, weight, pressure, and repulsion, are
not facts in themselves, but interpretations arrived at with the help
of psychical fictions.
Life, which is our best known form of being, is altogether "will to
the accumulation of strength"--all the processes of life hinge on
this: everything aims, not at preservation, but at accretion and
accumulation. Life as an individual case (a hypothesis which may be
applied to existence in general) strives after the maximum feeling
of power; life is essentially a striving after more power; striving
itself is only a straining after more power; the most fundamental
and innermost thing of all is this will. (Mechanism is merely the
semeiotics of the results.)
690.
The thing which is the cause of the existence of development cannot
in the course of investigation be found above development; it should
neither be regarded as "evolving" nor as evolved ... the "will to
power" cannot have been evolved.
691.
What is the relation of the whole of the organic process towards the
rest of nature?--Here the fundamental will reveals itself.
692.
Is the "will to power" a kind of will, or is it identical with the
concept will? Is it equivalent to desiring or commanding; is it the
will which Schopenhauer says is the essence of things?
My proposition is that the will of psychologists hitherto has been an
unjustifiable generalisation, and that there is no such thing as this
sort of will, that instead of the development of one will into several
forms being taken as a fact, the character of will has been cancelled
owing to the fact that its content, its "whither," was subtracted from
it: in Schopenhauer this is so in the highest degree; what he calls
"will" is merely an empty word. There is even less plausibility in
the will to live: for life is simply one of the manifestations of the
will to power; it is quite arbitrary and ridiculous to suggest that
everything is striving to enter into this particular form of the will
to power.
693.
If the innermost essence of existence is the will to power; if
happiness is every increase of power, and unhappiness the feeling of
not being able to resist, of not being able to become master: may
we not then postulate happiness and pain as cardinal facts? Is will
possible without these two oscillations of yea and nay? But who feels
happiness? ... Who will have power? ... Nonsensical question! If the
essence of all things is itself will to power, and consequently the
ability to feel pleasure and pain! Albeit: contrasts and obstacles are
necessary, therefore also, relatively, units which trespass on one
another.
694.
According to the obstacles which a force seeks with a view of
overcoming them, the measure of the failure and the fatality thus
provoked must increase, and in so far as every force can only manifest
itself against some thing that opposes it, an element of unhappiness is
necessarily inherent in every action. But this pain acts as a greater
incitement to life, and increases the will to power.
695.
If pleasure and pain are related to the feeling of power, life would
have to represent such an increase in power that the difference, the
"plus," would have to enter consciousness. A dead level of power,
if maintained, would have to measure its happiness in relation
to depreciations of that level, _i.e._ in relation to states of
unhappiness and not of happiness.... The will to an increase lies
in the essence of happiness: that power is enhanced, and that this
difference becomes conscious.
In a state of decadence after a certain time the opposite difference
becomes conscious, that is decrease: the memory of former strong
moments depresses the present feelings of happiness in this state
comparison reduces happiness.
696.
It is not the satisfaction of the will which is the cause of happiness
(to this superficial theory I am more particularly opposed--this absurd
psychological forgery in regard to the most simple things), but it is
that the will is always striving to overcome that which stands in its
way. The feeling of happiness lies precisely in the discontentedness of
the will, in the fact that without opponents and obstacles it is never
satisfied. "The happy man": a gregarious ideal.
697.
The normal discontent of our instincts--for instance, of the instinct
of hunger, of sex, of movement--contains nothing which is in itself
depressing; it rather provokes the feeling of life, and, whatever the
pessimists may say to us, like all the rhythms of small and irritating
stimuli, it strengthens. Instead of this discontent making us sick of
life, it is rather the great stimulus to life.
(Pleasure might even perhaps be characterised as the rhythm of small
and painful stimuli.)
698.
Kant says: "These lines of Count Verri's (_Sull' indole del piacere
e del dolore;_ 1781) I confirm with absolute certainty: 'Il solo
principio motore dell' uomo è il dolore. Il dolore precede ogni
piacere. Il piacere non è un essere positivo.'"[5]
[Footnote 5: _On the Nature of Pleasure and Pain._ "The only motive
force of man is pain. Pain precedes every pleasure. Pleasure is not a
positive thing."--Tr.]
699.
Pain is something different from pleasure--I mean it is not the
latter's opposite.
If the essence of pleasure has been aptly characterised as the feeling
of increased power (that is to say, as a feeling of difference which
presupposes comparison), that does not define the nature of pain.
The false contrasts which the people, and consequently the language,
believes in, are always dangerous fetters which impede the march of
truth. There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned
by a certain rhythmic sequence of small, painful stimuli: in this way
a very rapid growth of the feeling of power and of the feeling of
pleasure is attained. This is the case, for instance, in tickling,
also in the sexual tickling which accompanies the coitus: here we see
pain acting as the ingredient of happiness. It seems to be a small
hindrance which is overcome, followed immediately by another small
hindrance which once again is overcome--this play of resistance and
resistance overcome is the greatest excitant of that complete feeling
of overflowing and surplus power which constitutes the essence of
happiness.
The converse, which would be an increase in the feeling of pain through
small intercalated pleasurable stimuli, does not exist: pleasure and
pain are not opposites.
Pain is undoubtedly an intellectual process in which a judgment is
inherent--the judgment harmful, in which long experience is epitomised.
There is no such thing as pain in itself. It is not the wound that
hurts, it is the experience of the harmful results a wound may have for
the whole organism, which here speaks in this deeply moving way, and is
called pain. (In the case of deleterious influences which were unknown
to ancient man, as, for instance, those residing in the new combination
of poisonous chemicals, the hint from pain is lacking, and we are lost.)
That which is quite peculiar in pain is the prolonged disturbance,
the quivering subsequent to a terrible shock in the ganglia of the
nervous system. As a matter of fact, nobody suffers from the cause of
pain (from any sort of injury, for instance), but from the protracted
disturbance of his equilibrium which follows upon the shock. Pain is a
disease of the cerebral centres--pleasure is no disease at all.
The fact that pain may be the cause of reflex actions has appearances
and even philosophical prejudice in its favour. But in very sudden
accidents, if we observe closely, we find that the reflex action occurs
appreciably earlier than the feeling of pain. I should be in a bad way
when I stumbled if I had to wait until the fact had struck the bell
of my consciousness, and until a hint of what I had to do had been
telegraphed back to me. On the contrary, what I notice as clearly as
possible is, that first, in order to avoid a fall, reflex action on the
part of my foot takes place, and then, after a certain measurable space
of time, there follows quite suddenly a kind of painful wave in my
forehead. Nobody, then, reacts to pain. Pain is subsequently projected
into the wounded quarter--but the essence of this local pain is
nevertheless not the expression of a kind of local wound, it is merely
a local sign, the strength and nature of which is in keeping with the
severity of the wound, and of which the nerve centres have taken note.
The fact that as the result of this shock the muscular power of the
organism is materially reduced, does not prove in any way that the
essence of pain is to be sought in the lowering of the feeling of power.
Once more let me repeat: nobody reacts to pain: pain is no "cause" of
action. Pain itself is a reaction; the reflex movement is another and
earlier process--both originate at different points....
700.
The message of pain: in itself pain does not announce that which has
been momentarily damaged, but the significance of this damage for the
individual as a whole.
Are we to suppose that there are any pains which "the species" feel,
and which the individual does not?
701.
"The sum of unhappiness outweighs the sum of happiness: consequently
it were better that the world did not exist"--"The world is something
which from a rational standpoint it were better did not exist, because
it occasions more pain than pleasure to the feeling subject"--this
futile gossip now calls itself pessimism!
Pleasure and pain are accompanying factors, not causes; they are
second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value,--they are one
with the feeling "useful," "harmful," and therefore they are absolutely
fugitive and relative. For in regard to all utility and harmfulness
there are a hundred different ways of asking "what for?"
I despise this pessimism of sensitiveness: it is in itself a sign of
profoundly impoverished life.
702.
Man does not seek happiness and does not avoid unhappiness. Everybody
knows the famous prejudices I here contradict. Pleasure and pain are
mere results, mere accompanying phenomena--that which every man, which
every tiny particle of a living organism will have, is an increase of
power. In striving after this, pleasure and pain are encountered; it is
owing to that will that the organism seeks opposition and requires that
which stands in its way.... Pain as the hindrance of its will to power
is therefore a normal feature, a natural ingredient of every organic
phenomenon; man does not avoid it, on the contrary, he is constantly
in need of it: every triumph, every feeling of pleasure, every event
presupposes an obstacle overcome.
Let us take the simplest case, that of primitive nourishment; the
protoplasm extends its pseudopodia in order to seek for that which
resists it,--it does not do so out of hunger, but owing to its will to
power. Then it makes the attempt to overcome, to appropriate, and to
incorporate that with which it comes into contact--what people call
"nourishment" is merely a derivative, a utilitarian application, of the
primordial will to become stronger.
Pain is so far from acting as a diminution of our feeling of power,
that it actually forms in the majority of cases a spur to this
feeling,--the obstacle is the stimulus of the will to power.
703.
Pain has been confounded with one of its subdivisions, which is
exhaustion: the latter does indeed represent a profound reduction and
lowering of the will to power, a material loss of strength--that is
to say, there is _(a)_ pain as the stimulus to an increase or power,
and _(b)_ pain following upon an expenditure of power; in the first
case it is a spur, in the second it is the outcome of excessive
spurring.... The inability to resist is proper to the latter form of
pain: the provocation of that which resists is proper to the former....
The only happiness which is to be felt in the state of exhaustion is
that of going to sleep; in the other case, happiness means triumph....
The great confusion of psychologists consisted in the fact that they
did not keep these two kinds of happiness--that of falling asleep,
and that of triumph--sufficiently apart. Exhausted people will have
repose, slackened limbs, peace and quiet--and these things constitute
the bliss of Nihilistic religions and philosophies, the wealthy in
vital strength, the active, want triumph, defeated opponents, and the
extension of their feeling of power over ever wider regions. Every
healthy function of the organism has this need,--and the whole organism
constitutes an intricate complexity of systems struggling for the
increase of the feeling of power....
704.
How is it that the fundamental article of faith in all psychologies is
a piece of most outrageous contortion and fabrication? "Man strives
after happiness," for instance--how much of this is true? In order to
understand what life is, and what kind of striving and tenseness life
contains, the formula should hold good not only of trees and plants,
but of animals also. "What does the plant strive after?"--But here we
have already invented a false entity which does not exist,--concealing
and denying the fact of an infinitely variegated growth, with
individual and semi-individual starting-points, if we give it the
clumsy title "plant" as if it were a unit. It is very obvious that
the ultimate and smallest "individuals" cannot be understood in the
sense of metaphysical individuals or atoms; their sphere of power is
continually shifting its ground: but with all these changes, can it be
said that any of them strives after happiness?--All this expanding,
this incorporation and growth, is a search for resistance; movement
is essentially related to states of pain: the driving power here must
represent some other desire if it leads to such continual willing and
seeking of pain.--To what end do the trees of a virgin forest contend
with each other? "For happiness"?--For power! ...
Man is now master of the forces of nature, and master too of his own
wild and unbridled feelings (the passions have followed suit, and have
learned to become useful)--in comparison with primeval man, the man of
to-day represents an enormous quantum of power, but not an increase
in happiness! How can one maintain, then, that he has striven after
happiness?..
705.
But while I say this I see above me, and below the stars, the
glittering rat's-tail of errors which hitherto has represented the
greatest inspiration of man: "All happiness is the result of virtue all
virtue is the result of free will"!
Let us transvalue the values: all capacity is the outcome of a
happy organisation, all freedom is the outcome of capacity (freedom
understood here as facility in self-direction. Every artist will
understand me).
706.
"The value of life."--Every life stands by itself; all existence must
be justified, and not only life,--the justifying principle must be one
through which life itself speaks.
Life is only a means to something: it is the expression of the forms of
growth in power.
707.
The "conscious world" cannot be a starting-point for valuing: an
"objective" valuation is necessary.
In comparison with the enormous and complicated antagonistic processes
which the collective life of every organism represents, its conscious
world of feelings, intentions, and valuations, is only a small slice.
We have absolutely no right to postulate this particle of consciousness
as the object, the wherefore, of the collective phenomena of life:
the attainment of consciousness is obviously only an additional means
to the unfolding of life and to the extension of its power. That
is why it is a piece of childish simplicity to set up happiness,
or intellectuality, or morality, or any other individual sphere of
consciousness, as the highest value: and maybe to justify "the world"
with it.
This is my fundamental objection to all philosophical and moral
cosmologies and theologies, to all wherefores and highest values that
have appeared in philosophies and philosophic religions hitherto. A
kind of means is misunderstood as the object itself: conversely life
and its growth of power were debased to a means.
If we wished to postulate an adequate object of life it would not
necessarily be related in any way with the category of conscious life;
it would require rather to explain conscious life as a mere means to
itself....
The "denial of life" regarded as the object of life, the object of
evolution! Existence--a piece of tremendous stupidity! Any such mad
interpretation is only the outcome of life's being measured by the
factors of consciousness (pleasure and pain, good and evil). Here
the means are made to stand against the end--the "unholy," absurd,
and, above all, disagreeable means: how can the end be any use when
it requires such means? But where the fault lies is here--instead of
looking for the end which would explain the necessity of such means,
we posited an end from the start which actually excludes such means,
_i.e._ we made a desideratum in regard to certain means (especially
pleasurable, rational, and virtuous) into a rule, and then only did we
decide what end would be desirable....
Where the fundamental fault lies is in the fact that, instead of
regarding consciousness as an instrument and an isolated phenomenon
of life in general, we made it a standard, the highest value in life:
it is the faulty standpoint of _a parte ad totum,_--and that is why
all philosophers are instinctively seeking at the present day for a
collective consciousness, a thing that lives and wills consciously with
all that happens, a "Spirit," a "God." But they must be told that it is
precisely thus that life is converted into a monster; that a "God" and
a general sensorium would necessarily be something on whose account the
whole of existence would have to be condemned.... Our greatest relief
came when we eliminated the general consciousness which postulates ends
and means--in this way we ceased from being necessarily pessimists....
Our greatest indictment of life was the existence of God.
708.
_Concerning the value of "Becoming."_--If the movement of the world
really tended to reach a final state, that state would already have
been reached. The only fundamental fact, however, is that it does
not tend to reach a final state: and every philosophy and scientific
hypothesis (_e.g._ materialism) according to which such a final state
is necessary, is refuted by this fundamental fact.
I should like to have a concept of the world which does justice to this
fact. Becoming ought to be explained without having recourse to such
final designs. Booming must appear justified at every instant (or it
must defy all valuation: which has unity as its end); the present must
not under any circumstances be justified by a future, nor must the
past be justified for the sake of the present. "Necessity" must not
be interpreted in the form of a prevailing and ruling collective force
or as a prime motor; and still less as the necessary cause of some
valuable result. But to this end it is necessary to deny a collective
consciousness for Becoming,--a "God," in order that life may not be
veiled under the shadow of a being who feels and knows as we do and
yet _wills_ nothing: "God" is useless if he wants nothing; and if he
do want something, this presupposes a general sum of suffering and
irrationality which lowers the general value of Becoming. Fortunately
any such general power is lacking (a suffering God overlooking
everything, a general sensorium and ubiquitous Spirit, would be the
greatest indictment of existence).
Strictly speaking nothing of the nature of Being must be allowed to
remain,--because in that case Becoming loses its value and gets to be
sheer and superfluous nonsense.
The next question, then, is: how did the illusion Being originate (why
was it obliged to originate);
Likewise: how was it that all valuations based upon the hypothesis that
there was such a thing as Being came to be depreciated.
But in this way we have recognised that this hypothesis concerning
Being is the source of all the calumny that has been directed against
the world (the "Better world," the "True world" the "World Beyond," the
"Thing-in-itself").
(1) Becoming has no final state, it does not tend towards stability.
(2) Becoming is not a state of appearance, the world of Being is
probably only appearance.
(3) Becoming is of precisely the same value at every instant; the sum
of its value always remains equal: expressed otherwise, it has no
value; for that according to which it might be measured, and in regard
to which the word value might have some sense, is entirely lacking.
The collective value of the world defies valuation; for this reason
philosophical pessimism belongs to the order of farces.
709.
We should not make our little desiderata the judges of existence!
Neither should we make culminating evolutionary forms (_e.g._ mind) the
"absolute" which stands behind evolution!
710.
Our knowledge has become scientific to the extent in which it has
been able to make use of number and measure. It might be worth while
to try and see whether a scientific order of values might not be
constructed according to a scale of numbers and measures representing
energy.... All other values are matters of prejudice, simplicity, and
misunderstanding. They may all be reduced to that scale of numbers and
measures representing energy. The ascent in this scale would represent
an increase of value, the descent a diminution.
But here appearance and prejudice are against one (moral values are
only apparent values compared with those which are physiological).
711.