THE WILL TO POWER IN NATURE.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Levy, Oscar, and Ludovici, Anthony M. (Anthony Mario)
Because "necessity," "causality," "design," are merely useful "semblances."
Because the aim is not "the increase of the sphere of consciousness," but the increase of power; in which increase the utility of consciousness is also contained; and the same holds good of pleasure and pain.
Because a mere means must not be elevated to the highest criterion of value (such as states of consciousness like pleasure and pain, if consciousness is in itself only a means).
Because the world is not an organism at all, but a thing of chaos; because the development of "intellectuality" is only a means tending relatively to extend the duration of an organisation.
Because all "desirability" has no sense in regard to the general character of existence.
712.
"God" is the culminating moment: life is an eternal process of deifying and undeifying. But withal there is no zenith of values, but only a zenith of power.
Absolute exclusion of mechanical and materialistic interpretations. they are both only expressions of inferior states, of emotions deprived of all spirit (of the "will to power").
The retrograde movement front the zenith of development (the intellectualisation of power on some slave-infected soil) may be shown to be the result of the highest degree of energy turning against itself, once it no longer has anything to organise, and utilising its power in order to disorganise.
(a) The ever-increasing suppression of societies, and the latter's subjection by a smaller number of stronger individuals.
(b) The ever-increasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, hence the rise of democracy, and ultimately of anarchy, in the elements.
713.
Value is the highest amount of power that a man can assimilate—a man, not mankind! Mankind is much more of a means than an end. It is a question of type: mankind is merely the experimental material; it is the overflow of the ill-constituted—a field of ruins.
714.
Words relating to values are merely banners planted on those spots where a new blessedness was discovered—a new feeling.
715.
The standpoint of "value" is the same as that of the conditions of preservation and enhancement, in regard to complex creatures of relative stability appearing in the course of evolution.
There are no such things as lasting and ultimate entities, no atoms, no monads: here also "permanence" was first introduced by ourselves (from practical, utilitarian, and other motives).
"The forms that rule"; the sphere of the subjugated is continually extended; or it decreases or increases according to the conditions (nourishment) being either favourable or unfavourable.
"Value" is essentially the standpoint for the increase or decrease of these dominating centres (pluralities in any case; for "unity" cannot be observed anywhere in the nature of development).
The means of expression afforded by language are useless for the purpose of conveying any facts concerning "development": the need of positing a rougher world of stable existences and things forms part of our eternal desire for preservation. We may speak of atoms and monads in a relative sense: and this is certain, that the smallest world is the most stable world .... There is no such thing as will: there are only punctuations of will, which are constantly increasing and decreasing their power.