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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[Pg 174] 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[Pg 177] 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[Pg 178] 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.
