Volume Ii Part 35 (2/2)
10.
ABSENCE OF FEELING OF NEW CHAINS.-So long as we do not feel that we are in some way dependent, we consider ourselves independent-a false conclusion that shows how proud man is, how eager for dominion. For he hereby a.s.sumes that he would always be sure to observe and recognise dependence so soon as he suffered it, the preliminary hypothesis being that he generally lives in independence, and that, should he lose that independence for once in a way, he would immediately detect a contrary sensation.-Suppose, however, the reverse to be true-that he is always living in a complex state of dependence, but thinks himself free where, through long habit, he no longer feels the weight of the chain? He only suffers from new chains, and ”free will” really means nothing more than an absence of feeling of new chains.
11.
FREEDOM OF THE WILL AND THE ISOLATION OF FACTS.-Our ordinary inaccurate observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls them a fact.
Between this fact and another we imagine a vacuum, we isolate each fact.
In reality, however, the sum of our actions and cognitions is no series of facts and intervening vacua, but a continuous stream. Now the belief in free will is incompatible with the idea of a continuous, uniform, undivided, indivisible flow. This belief presupposes that every single action is isolated and indivisible; it is an atomic theory as regards volition and cognition.-We misunderstand facts as we misunderstand characters, speaking of similar characters and similar facts, whereas both are non-existent. Further, we bestow praise and blame only on this false hypothesis, that there are similar facts, that a graduated order of species of facts exists, corresponding to a graduated order of values.
Thus we isolate not only the single fact, but the groups of apparently equal facts (good, evil, compa.s.sionate, envious actions, and so forth). In both cases we are wrong.-The word and the concept are the most obvious reason for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions. We do not merely thereby designate the things; the thought at the back of our minds is that by the word and the concept we can grasp the essence of the actions. We are still constantly led astray by words and actions, and are induced to think of things as simpler than they are, as separate, indivisible, existing in the absolute. Language contains a hidden philosophical mythology, which, however careful we may be, breaks out afresh at every moment. The belief in free will-that is to say, in similar facts and isolated facts-finds in language its continual apostle and advocate.
12.
THE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS.-A man cannot feel any psychical pleasure or pain unless he is swayed by one of two illusions. Either he believes in the ident.i.ty of certain facts, certain sensations, and in that case finds spiritual pleasure and pain in comparing present with past conditions and in noting their similarity or difference (as is invariably the case with recollection); or he believes in the freedom of the will, perhaps when he reflects, ”I ought not to have done this,” ”This might have turned out differently,” and from these reflections likewise he derives pleasure and pain. Without the errors that are rife in every psychical pain and pleasure, humanity would never have developed. For the root idea of humanity is that man is free in a world of bondage-man, the eternal wonder-worker, whether his deeds be good or evil-man, the amazing exception, the super-beast, the quasi-G.o.d, the mind of creation, the indispensable, the key-word to the cosmic riddle, the mighty lord of nature and despiser of nature, the creature that calls _its_ history ”the history of the world”! _Vanitas vanitatum h.o.m.o._
13.
REPEt.i.tION.-It is an excellent thing to express a thing consecutively in two ways, and thus provide it with a right and a left foot. Truth can stand indeed on one leg, but with two she will walk and complete her journey.
14.
MAN AS THE COMIC ACTOR OF THE WORLD.-It would require beings more intellectual than men to relish to the full the humorous side of man's view of himself as the goal of all existence and of his serious p.r.o.nouncement that he is satisfied only with the prospect of fulfilling a world-mission. If a G.o.d created the world, he created man to be his ape, as a perpetual source of amus.e.m.e.nt in the midst of his rather tedious eternities. The music of the spheres surrounding the world would then presumably be the mocking laughter of all the other creatures around mankind. G.o.d in his boredom uses pain for the tickling of his favourite animal, in order to enjoy his proudly tragic gestures and expressions of suffering, and, in general, the intellectual inventiveness of the vainest of his creatures-as inventor of this inventor. For he who invented man as a joke had more intellect and more joy in intellect than has man.-Even here, where our human nature is willing to humble itself, our vanity again plays us a trick, in that we men should like in this vanity at least to be quite marvellous and incomparable. Our uniqueness in the world! Oh, what an improbable thing it is! Astronomers, who occasionally acquire a horizon outside our world, give us to understand that the drop of life on the earth is without significance for the total character of the mighty ocean of birth and decay; that countless stars present conditions for the generation of life similar to those of the earth-and yet these are but a handful in comparison with the endless number that have never known, or have long been cured, of the eruption of life; that life on each of these stars, measured by the period of its existence, has been but an instant, a flicker, with long, long intervals afterwards-and thus in no way the aim and final purpose of their existence. Possibly the ant in the forest is quite as firmly convinced that it is the aim and purpose of the existence of the forest, as we are convinced in our imaginations (almost unconsciously) that the destruction of mankind involves the destruction of the world. It is even modesty on our part to go no farther than this, and not to arrange a universal twilight of the world and the G.o.ds as the funeral ceremony of the last man. Even to the eye of the most unbia.s.sed astronomer a lifeless world can scarcely appear otherwise than as a s.h.i.+ning and swinging star wherein man lies buried.
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