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N.B.—The explanation of life may be sought, in the first place, through mental images of phenomena which precede it (purposes);
Secondly, through mental images of phenomena which follow behind it (the mathematico-physical explanation).
The two should not be confounded. Thus: the physical explanation, which is the symbolisation of the world by means of feeling and thought, cannot in itself make feeling and thinking originate again and show its derivation: physics must rather construct the world of feeling, consistently without feeling or purpose right up to the highest man. And teleology is only a history of purposes, and is never physical.
563.
Our method of acquiring "knowledge" is limited to a process of establishing quantities, but we can by no means help feeling the difference of quantity as differences of quality. Quality is merely a relative truth for us; it is not a "thing-in-itself."
Our senses have a certain definite quantum as a mean, within the limits of which they perform their functions—that is to say, we become conscious of bigness and smallness in accordance with the conditions of our existence. If we sharpened or blunted our senses tenfold, we should perish—that is to say, we feel even proportions as qualities in regard to our possibilities of existence.
564.
But could not all quantities be merely tokens of qualities? Another consciousness and scale of desires must correspond to greater power in fact, another point of view; growth in itself is the expression of a desire to become more; the desire for a greater quantum springs from a certain quale, in a purely quantitative world, everything would be dead, stiff, and motionless.—The reduction of all qualities to quantities is nonsense: it is discovered that they can only stand together, an analogy—
565.
Qualities are our insurmountable barriers; we cannot possibly help feeling mere differences of quantity as something fundamentally different from quantity—that is to say, as qualities, which we[Pg 70] can no longer reduce to terms of quantity. But everything in regard to which the word "knowledge" has any sense at all, belongs to the realm of reckoning, weighing, and measuring, to quantity whereas, conversely, all our valuations (that is to say, our sensations) belong precisely to the realm of qualities, i.e. to those truths which belong to us alone and to our point of view, and which absolutely cannot be "known." It is obvious that every one of us, different creatures, must feel different qualities, and must therefore live in a different world from the rest. Qualities are an idiosyncrasy proper to human nature; the demand that these our human interpretations and values, should be general and perhaps real values, belongs to the hereditary madnesses of human pride.
566.
The "real world," in whatever form it has been conceived hitherto—was always the world of appearance over again.
567.
The world of appearance, i.e. a world regarded in the light of values; ordered, selected according to values—that is to say, in this case, according to the standpoint of utility in regard to the preservation and the increase of power of a certain species of animals.
It is the point of view, then, which accounts for the character of "appearance." As if a world could remain over, when the point of view is cancelled! By such means relativity would also be cancelled!
Every centre of energy has its point of view of the whole of the remainder of the world—that is to say, its perfectly definite valuation, its mode of action, its mode of resistance. The "world of appearance" is thus reduced to a specific kind of action on the world proceeding from a centre.
But there is no other kind of action: and the "world" is only a word for the collective play of these actions. Reality consists precisely in this particular action and reaction of every isolated factor against the whole.
There no longer remains a shadow of a right to speak here of "appearance." ...
The specific way of reacting is the only way of reacting; we do not know how many kinds and what sort of kinds there are.
But there is no "other," no "real," no essential being,—for thus a world without action and reaction would be expressed....
The antithesis: world of appearance and real world, is thus reduced to the antitheses "world" and "nonentity."
568.
A criticism of the concept "real and apparent world."—Of these two the first is a mere fiction, formed out of a host of imaginary things.
Appearance itself belongs to reality: it is a form of its being; i.e. in a world where there is no such thing as being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created through appearance; a tempo in which observation and comparison is possible, etc.
"Appearance" is an adjusted and simplified world, in which our practical instincts have worked: for us it is perfectly true: for we live in it, we can live in it: this is the proof of its truth as far as we are concerned....
The world, apart from the fact that we have to live in it—the world, which we have not adjusted to our being, our logic, and our psychological prejudices—does not exist as a world "in-itself"; it is essentially a world of relations: under certain circumstances it has a different aspect from every different point at which it is seen: it presses against every point, and every point resists it—and these collective relations are in every case incongruent.
The measure of power determines what being possesses the other measure of power: under what form, force, or constraint, it acts or resists.
Our particular case is interesting enough: we have created a conception in order to be able to live in a world, in order to perceive just enough to enable us to endure life in that world....
569.
The nature of our psychological vision is determined by the fact—
(1) That communication is necessary, and that for communication to be possible something must be stable, simplified, and capable of being stated precisely (above all, in the so-called identical case). In order that it may be communicable, it must be felt as something adjusted, as "recognisable." The material of the senses, arranged by the understanding,[Pg 73] reduced to coarse leading features, made similar to other things, and classified with its like. Thus: the indefiniteness and the chaos of sense-impressions are, as it were, made logical.
(2) The phenomenal world is the adjusted world which we believe to be real, Its "reality" lies in the constant return of similar, familiar, and related things, in their rationalised character, and in the belief that we are here able to reckon and determine.
(3) The opposite of this phenomenal world is not "the real world," but the amorphous and unadjustable world consisting of the chaos of sensations—that is to say, another kind of phenomenal; world, a world which to us is "unknowable."
