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In summa: The world as it ought to be exists; this world in which we live is an error—this our world should not exist.
The belief in Being shows itself only as a result: the real primum mobile is the disbelief in Becoming, the mistrust of Becoming, the scorn of all Becoming....
What kind of a man reflects in this way? An unfruitful, suffering kind, a world-weary kind. If we try and fancy what the opposite kind of man would be like, we have a picture of a creature who would not require the belief in Being; he would rather despise it as dead, tedious, and indifferent....
The belief that the world which ought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the unfruitful, who do not wish to create a world as it should be. They take it for granted, they seek for means and ways of attaining to it. "The will to truth"—is the impotence of the will to create.
| To recognise that something | } | Antagonism in |
| is thus or thus: | } | the degrees of |
| To act so that something will | } | energy in |
| be thus or thus: | } | various natures. |
The fiction of a world which corresponds to our desires; psychological artifices and interpretations calculated to associate all that we honour and regard as pleasant, with this real world.
"The will to truth" at this stage is essentially the art of interpretation: to which also belongs that interpretation which still possesses strength.
The same species of men, grown one degree poorer, no longer possessed of the power to interpret and to create fictions, produces the Nihilists. A Nihilist is the man who says of the world as it is, that it ought not to exist, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist. According to this, existence (action, suffering, willing, and feeling) has no sense: the pathos of the "in vain" is the Nihilist's pathos—and as pathos it is moreover an inconsistency on the part of the Nihilist.
He who is not able to introduce his will into things, the man without either will or energy, at least invests them with some meaning, i.e. he believes that a will is already in them.
The degree of a man's will-power may be measured from the extent to which he can dispense with the meaning in things, from the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning: because he himself arranges a small portion of it.
The philosophical objective view of things may thus be a sign of poverty both of will and of energy. For energy organises what is closest and next; the "scientists," whose only desire is to ascertain what exists, are such as cannot arrange things as they ought to be.
The artists, an intermediary species, they at least set up a symbol of what should exist,—they are productive inasmuch as they actually alter and transform; not like the scientists, who leave everything as it is.
The connection between philosophers and the pessimistic religions; the same species of man[Pg 91] (they attribute the highest degree of reality to the things which are valued highest).
The connection between philosophers and moral men and their evaluations (the moral interpretation of the world as the sense of the world: after the collapse of the religious sense).
The overcoming of philosophers by the annihilation of the world of being: intermediary period of Nihilism; before there is sufficient strength present to transvalue values, and to make the world of becoming, and of appearance, the only world to be deified and called good.
B.
Nihilism as a normal phenomenon may be a symptom of increasing strength or of increasing weakness:—
Partly owing to the fact that the strength to create and to will has grown to such an extent, that it no longer requires this collective interpretation and introduction of a sense ("present duties," state, etc.);
Partly owing to the fact that even the creative power necessary to invent sense, declines, and disappointment becomes the ruling condition. The inability to believe in a sense becomes "unbelief."
What is the meaning of science in regard to both possibilities?
(1) It is a sign of strength and self-control; it shows an ability to dispense with healing, consoling worlds of illusion.
(2) It is also able to undermine, to dissect, to disappoint, and to weaken.
C.
The belief in truth, the need of holding to something which is believed to be true: psychological reduction apart from the valuations that have existed hitherto. Fear and laziness.
At the same time unbelief: Reduction. In what way does it acquire a new value, if a real world does not exist at all (by this means the capacity of valuing, which hitherto has been lavished upon the world of being, becomes free once more).
586.
The real and the "apparent" world.
A.
The erroneous concepts which proceed from this concept are of three kinds:—
(a) An unknown world:—we are adventurers, we are inquisitive,—that which is known to us makes us weary (the danger of the concept lies in the fact it suggests that "this" world is known to us....);
(b) Another world, where things are different:—something in us draws comparisons, and thereby our calm submission and our silence lose their value—perhaps all will be for the best, we have not hoped in vain.... The world where things are different—who knows?—where we ourselves will be different....
(c) A real world:—that is the most singular[Pg 93] blow and attack which we have ever received; so many things have become encrusted in the word "true," that we involuntarily give these to the "real world"; the real world must also be a truthful world, such a one as would not deceive us or make fools of us; to believe in it in this way is to be almost forced to believe (from convention, as is the case among people worthy of confidence).
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The concept, "the unknown world," suggests that this world is known to us (is tedious);
The concept, "the other world," suggests that this world might be different, it suppresses necessity and fate (it is useless to submit and to adapt one's self);
The concept, the true world, suggests that this world is untruthful, deceitful, dishonest, not genuine, and not essential, and consequently not a world calculated to be useful to us (it is unadvisable to become adapted to it; better resist it).
