allowed to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this given is not a sufficient basis also for understanding the so-called mechanical (or “material”) world on the basis of things like this given. I don’t mean to understand it as an illusion, an “appearance,” an “idea” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer20), but as having the same degree of reality as our affects themselves have—as a more primitive form of the world of affects in which everything is still combined in a powerful unity, something which then branches off and develops in the organic process (also, as is reasonable, gets softer and weaker —), as a form of instinctual life in which the collective organic functions, along with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and metabolism, are still synthetically bound up with one another—as an early form of life? In the end making this attempt is not only permitted but is also demanded by the conscience of the method. Not to assume various forms of causality as long as the attempt to manage with a single one has been pushed to its furthest limit (— all the way to nonsense, if I may say so): that is one moral of the method which people nowadays may not evade;—as a mathematician would say, it is a consequence “of its definition.” In the end the question is whether we acknowledge the will as something really efficient, whether we believe in the causal properties of the will. If we do—and basically our faith in this is simply our faith in causality itself—then we must make the attempt to set up hypothetically the causality of the will as the single causality. Of course, “will” can work only on “will”— and not on “stuff” (not, for example, on “nerves”—). Briefly put, we must venture the hypothesis whether in general, wherever we recognize “effects,” will is not working on will—and whether every mechanical event, to the extent that a force is active in it, is not force of will, an effect of the will.—Suppose finally that we were to succeed in explaining our entire instinctual life as a development and branching off of a single fundamental form of the will—that is, of the will to power, as my principle asserts—and suppose we could trace back all organic functions to this will to power and also locate in it the solution to the problem of reproduction and nourishment—that is one problem—then in so doing we would have earned the right to designate all efficient force unambiguously as will to power. Seen from inside, the world defined and described according to its “intelligible character” would be simply “will to power” and nothing else. —
37
“What’s that? Doesn’t that mean in popular language that God is disproved, but the devil is not —?” To the contrary, to the contrary, my friends! And in the devil’s name, who is forcing you to speak such common language?
38
What happened only very recently, in all the brightness of modern times, with the French Revolution, that ghastly and, considered closely, superfluous farce, which, however, noble and rapturous observers from all Europe have interpreted from a distance for so long and so passionately according to their own outrage and enthusiasm until the text disappeared under the interpretation, in the same way a noble posterity could once again misunderstand all the past and only by doing that perhaps make looking at that past tolerable.—Or rather, hasn’t this already happened? Were we ourselves not—this “noble posterity”? And, to the extent that we understand this point, is not this the very moment when—it is over?
39
No one will readily consider a doctrine true simply because it makes us happy or virtuous, except perhaps the gentle “idealists,” who go into raptures about the good, the true, and the beautiful and allow all sorts of colourful, clumsy, and good-natured desirable things to swim around in confusion in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But people, even prudent people, do like to forget that causing unhappiness and evil are by the same token no counterarguments. Something could well be true, although it is at the same time harmful and dangerous to the highest degree. In fact, it could even be part of the fundamental composition of existence that people are destroyed when they fully recognize this point—so that the strength of a spirit might be measured by how much it could still endure of the “truth,” or put more clearly, by the degree it would have to have the truth diluted, sweetened, muffled, or falsified. But there is no doubt about the fact that evil and unhappy people are more favoured and have a greater probability of success in discovering certain parts of the truth, to say nothing of the evil people who are happy—a species which moralists are silent about. Perhaps toughness and cunning provide more favourable conditions for the development of the strong, independent spirit and the philosopher than that gentle, refined, conciliatory good nature and that art of taking things lightly which people value in a scholar, and value rightly. If we assume, first of all, that the notion of a “philosopher” is not restricted to the philosopher who writes books—or even puts his own philosophy into books!—A final characteristic in the picture of the free-spirited philosopher is provided by Stendhal. Because of German taste I don’t wish to overlook emphasizing him:— for he goes against German taste. This last great psychologist states the following: “To be a good philosopher it is necessary to be dry, clear, without illusions. A banker who has made a fortune has one part of the character required to make discoveries in philosophy, that is to say, to see clearly into what is.”21
40
Everything profound loves masks. The most profound things of all even have a hatred for images and allegories. Shouldn’t the right disguise in which the shame of a god walks around be something exactly opposite? A questionable question: it would be strange if some mystic or other had not already ventured something like that on his own. There are processes of such a delicate sort that people do well to bury them in something crude and make them unrecognizable. There are actions of love and of extravagant generosity, after which there is nothing more advisable than to grab a stick and give an eyewitness a good thrashing:— in so doing we cloud his memory. Some people know how to befuddle or batter their own memories in order at least to take revenge on this single witness:— shame is resourceful. It is not the worst things that make people feel the worst shame. Behind a mask there is not only malice—there is so much goodness in cunning. I could imagine that a person who had something valuable and vulnerable to hide might roll through his life as coarse and round as an old green wine barrel with strong hoops. The delicacy of his shame wants it that way. For a person whose shame is profound runs into his fate and delicate decisions on pathways which few people ever reach and of whose existence those closest to him and his most intimate associates are not permitted to know. His mortal danger hides itself from their eyes, just as much as his confidence in life does, once he regains it. A person who is concealed in this way, who from instinct uses speaking for silence and keeping quiet and who is tireless in avoiding communication, wants and demands that, instead of him, a mask of him wanders around in the hearts and heads of his friends. And suppose he does not want that mask: one day his eyes will open to the fact that nonetheless there is a mask of him there—and that that’s a good thing. Every profound spirit needs a mask; even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continuously growing, thanks to the constantly false, that is, shallow interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives. —
41
A person has to test himself, to see that he is meant for independence and command— and he must do this at the right time. He should not evade his tests, although they are perhaps the most dangerous game he can play, tests which in the end are made only with ourselves as witnesses and with no other judges. Not to get stuck on a single person:— not even on the someone one loves the most. Every person is a prison—a cranny as well. And don’t remain stuck on one’s fatherland:— not even if it is enduring the greatest suffering and in the greatest need of assistance—it is less difficult to disentangle one’s heart from a victorious fatherland. Don’t get stuck on pity, even in the case of higher men whose rare torment and helplessness some fortuitous circumstance has allowed us to see. Don’t get stuck on a science, not even if it tempts us with the most precious discoveries apparently reserved explicitly for us. Don’t get stuck on one’s own detachment, on that sensual distancing and strangeness of a bird which constantly flies further up into the