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632.
The "regularity" of a sequence is only a metaphorical expression, not a fact, just as if a rule were followed here! And the same holds good of "conformity to law." We find a formula in order to express an ever-recurring kind of succession of phenomena: but that does not show that we have discovered a law; much less a force which is the cause of a recurrence of effects. The fact that something always happens thus or thus, is interpreted here as if a creature always acted thus or thus as the result of obedience to a law or to a lawgiver: whereas apart from the "law" it would be free to act differently. But precisely that inability to act otherwise might originate in the creature itself, it might be that it did not act thus or thus in response to a law, but simply because it was so constituted. It would mean simply: that something cannot also be something else; that it cannot be first this, and then something quite different; that it is neither free nor the reverse, but merely thus or thus. The fault lies in thinking a subject into things.
633.
To speak of two consecutive states, the first as "cause," and the second as "effect," is false. The first state cannot bring about anything, the second has nothing effected in it.
It is a question of a struggle between two elements unequal in power: a new adjustment is arrived at, according to the measure of power each possesses. The second state is something fundamentally different from the first (it is not its effect): the essential thing Is, that the factors which engage in the struggle leave it with different quanta of power.
634.
A. criticism of Materialism.—Let us dismiss the two popular concepts, Necessity and Law, from this idea: the first introduces a false constraint, the second a false liberty into the world. "Things" do not act regularly, they follow no rule: there are no things (that is our fiction); neither do they act in accordance with any necessity. There is no obedience here: for, the fact that something is as it is, strong or weak, is not the result of obedience or of a rule or of a constraint....
The degree of resistance and the degree of superior power—this is the question around which all phenomena turn: if we, for our own purposes and calculations, know how to express this in formulas and "laws," all the better for us! But that does not mean that we have introduced any "morality" into the world, just because we have fancied it as obedient.
There are no laws: every power draws its last consequence at every moment. Things are calculable precisely owing to the fact that there is no possibility of their being otherwise than they are.
A quantum of power is characterised by the[Pg 118] effect it produces and the influence it resists. The adiaphoric state which would be thinkable in itself, is entirely lacking. It is essentially a will to violence and a will to defend one's self against violence. It is not self-preservation: every atom exercises its influence over the whole of existence—it is thought out of existence if one thinks this radiation of will-power away. That is why I call it a quantum of "Will to Power"; with this formula one can express the character which cannot be abstracted in thought from mechanical order, without suppressing the latter itself in thought.
The translation of the world of effect into a visible world—a world for the eye—is the concept "movement." Here it is always understood that something has been moved,—whether it be the fiction of an atomic globule or even of the abstraction of the latter, the dynamic atom, something is always imagined that has an effect—that is to say, we have not yet rid ourselves of the habit into which our senses and speech inveigled us. Subject and object, an agent to the action, the action and that which does it separated: we must not forget that all this signifies no more than semeiotics and—nothing real. Mechanics as a teaching of movement is already a translation of phenomena into man's language of the senses.
635.
We are in need of "unities" in order to be able to reckon: but this is no reason for supposing that "unities" actually exist. We borrowed the[Pg 119] concept "unity" from our concept "ego,"—our very oldest article of faith. If we did not believe ourselves to be unities we should never have formed the concept "thing." Now—that is to say, somewhat late in the day, we are overwhelmingly convinced that our conception of the concept "ego" is no security whatever for a real entity. In order to maintain the mechanical interpretation of the world theoretically, we must always make the reserve that it is with fictions that we do so: the concept of movement (derived from the language of our senses) and the concept of the atom (= entity, derived from our psychical experience) are based upon a sense-prejudice and a psychological prejudice.
Mechanics formulates consecutive phenomena, and it does so semeiologically, in the terms of the senses and of the mind (that all influence is movement; that where there is movement something is at work moving): it does not touch the question of the causal force.
The mechanical world is imagined as the eye and the sense of touch alone could imagine a world (as "moved"),—in such a way as to be calculable,—as to simulate causal entities "things" (atoms) whose effect is constant (the transfer of the false concept of subject to the concept atom).
The mixing together of the concept of numbers, of the concept of thing (the idea of subject), of the concept of activity (the separation of that which is the cause, and the effect), of the concept of movement: all these things are phenomenal; our eye and our psychology are still in it all.
If we eliminate these adjuncts, nothing remains[Pg 120] over but dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: the essence of which resides in their relation to all other quanta, in their "influence" upon the latter. The will to power, not Being, not Becoming, but a pathos—is the elementary fact, from these first results a Becoming, an influencing....
636.
The physicists believe in a "true world" after their own kind; a fixed systematising of atoms to perform necessary movements, and holding good equally of all creatures, so that, according to them, the "world of appearance" reduces itself to the side of general and generally-needed Being, which is accessible to every one according to his kind (accessible and also adjusted,—made "subjective"). But here they are in error. The atom which they postulate is arrived at by the logic of that perspective of consciousness; it is in itself therefore a subjective fiction. This picture of the world which they project is in no way essentially different from the subjective picture: the only difference is, that it is composed simply with more extended senses, but certainly with our senses.... And in the end, without knowing it, they left something out of the constellation: precisely the necessary perspective factor, by means of which every centre of power—and not man alone—constructs the rest of the world from its point of view—that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength.... They forgot to reckon with this perspective-fixing power,[Pg 121] in "true being,"—or, in school-terms, subject-being. They suppose that this was "evolved" and added;—but even the chemical investigator needs it: it is indeed specific Being, which determines action and reaction according to circumstances.
