The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Vol. 15
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THE COMPLETE WORKS OF O l s X i.. * FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE The First Complete a?td Authorised English Translation E D IT ED BY D r. OSCAR LEVY VOLUME FIFTEEN THE WILL TO POWER •BOOKS THREE AND FOUR 236438 Of the First Edition of One Thousand Five Hundred Copies this is 1 3 6 8 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE THE WILL TO POWER AN ATTEMPTED TRANSVALUATION OF ALL VALUES TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI VOL. II B o o k s III a n d IV T. N. FOULIS 13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET EDINBURGH: a n d LONDON 1910 1 5 3 3 ! 3 V. Z ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed by M o r r is o n & G xbb L i m i t e d , Edinburgh CONTENTS OF VOL. II. PAGE T r a n s l a t o r ’s P r e f a c e - - - vii THIRD BOOK. THE PRINCIPLES OF A NEW VALUATION. I. T h e W i l l t o P o w e r in S c i e n c e — {a) The Method of Investigation ’ - 3 (b) The Starting-Point of Epistemology 5 (,c) The Belief in the “ Ego.” Subject 12 (d) Biology of the Instinct of Knowledge, Per- spectivity ----- 20 (e) The Origin of Reason and Logic - 26 (/) Consciousness . - - 38 (^■) Judgment. True— False- - 43 (h) Against Causality - - - - - 53 (z) The Thing-in-Itself and Appearance 62 (k) The Metaphysical Need - - - 74 (/) The Biological Value of Knowledge - 96 (m) Science ----- - 99 II. The W ill to Power in ~~rNature— 1. The Mechanical Interpretation of th ew o rld - 109 2. The Will'to Power as Life— '(a) The Organic Process - - - - 123 (b) Man - - - - - - 132 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations - 161 b vi CONTENTS OF VOL. II. PAGE III. T h e W i l l t o P o w e r a s E x e m p l i f i e d in S o c ie t y a n d in t h e In d i v i d u a l — x. Society and the State - -- - - 183 r 2. The Individual - - - - - 214 IV. The W ill to Power in Art - - - 239 FOURTH BOOK. DISCIPLINE AND BREEDING. I. T h e O r d e r o f R a n k — 1. The Doctrine of the Order of Rank - - 2*95 2. The Strong and the Weak - 298 3. The Noble Alan ----- ^$0 4. The Lords of the Earth - - - - 360 5. The Great Man ----- 366 6. The Highest Man as Lawgiver of the Future - 373 II. D io n y s u s - - - - - - 388 III. Eternal Recurrence - - - - 422 TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. F o r the history of the text constituting this volume I would refer readers to my preface to The W ill to Power, Books I. and II., where they will also find a brief explanation of the actual title of the com plete work. In the two books before us Nietzsche boldly carries his principle still further into the various departments of human life, and does not shrink from showing its application even to science, to art, and to metaphysics. Throughout Part I. of the Third Book we find him going to great pains to impress the fact upon, us that science is as arbitrary as art in its mode of procedure, and that the knowledge of the scientist is but the outcome of his inexorable will to power interpreting facts in the terms of the self-pre servative conditions of the particular order of human beings to which he belongs. In Apjiorisms 515 and 516, which are typical of almost all the thought expressed in Part I., Nietzsche says distinctly: “ T he object is not* to know,* but to schematise^— to impose as-much regularity andlorm upon chaos as. our,practicaLneeds require.” Unfamiliarity, constant change, and the inability to reckon with possibilities, are sources of great viii t r a n s l a t o r ’s p r e f a c e . danger: hence, everything must be explained, as-, simulated, and rendered capable^_of cajculatio^ if . Nature-isjtobejmastered and cpntrolled. Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense— always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable. Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of diges tion which compels an organism to make things “ like ” (to “ assimilate ”) before it can absorb them (Aph. 51 o). And seeing that he denies that hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amoeba’s will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making similar which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknow ledged to be merely a form of the same funda mental will. An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche’s argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least “ necessary,” but only a sign o f inability. The whole argument of Part I. tends to draw t r a n s l a t o r ’s p r e f a c e science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux. In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which “ creates the impression of Being out of Becoming ” (Aph. 5 17). According to this standpoint, then,^oiisciQiisness---- is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends nr contracts according to .onr needs fAph. 524). It might disappear al together (Aph. 523), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolu tionary form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would also have required to have been deified. Pantheism, Theism, Unitarianism— in fact all religions in which a conscious god is worshipped, are thus aptly classed by Nietzsche as the result of man’s desire to elevate that which is but a new and wonderful instrument of his will to power, to the chief place in the imaginary world beyond t r a n s l a t o r ’s p r e f a c e . (eternal soul), and to make it even the deity itself (God Omniscient). With the question of Truth we find Nietzsche quite as ready to uphold his thesis as with all other questions. He frankly declares that “ the criterion of truth lies injhe enhanc^ent^f_thjQ --power.” (Aph. 5 34), and thus stands in diametrical , opposition to Spencer, who makes constraint or inability the criterion of truth. (See Principles o f Psychology, new edition, chapter ix. “ the unconceivableness of its negation is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition”) However paradoxical Nietzsche’s view may seem, we shall find that it is actually substantiated by experience; for the activity of our senses certainly convinces us more or less according to the degree to which it is provoked. Thus, if we walked for long round a completely dark room, and everything yielded, however slightly, to our touch, we should remain quite unconvinced that we were in a room at all, more particularly if— to suppose a still more impossible case— the floor yielded too. What provokes great activity in the bulbs of our fingers, then, likewise generates the sensation of truth. From this Nietzsche proceeds to argue that what provokes the strongest sentiments in ourselves is also true to us, and, from the standpoint of thought, “ that which gives thought the greatest sensation of strength” (Aph. 533). The provocation of intense emotion, and there fore the provocation of that state in which the body is above the normal in power, thus becomes TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. xi ; and it is a very remarkable thing thaFtwo prominent English thinkers should, at the very end of their careers, have practically admitted this, despite the fact that all their philo sophical productions had been based upon a com pletely different belief. I refer, of course, to Spencer and Buckle, who both upheld the view that in a system of thought the emotional factor is of the highest importance. It follows from all this, that lies and false doctrines may quite conceivably prove to be even more preservative to species than truth itself, and although this is a view we have already encountered in the opening aphorisms of Beyond Good and E vil, in Aph.