PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. 723 



world, for some ' hereafter ' or other, is radically, perhaps nothing but 

 a symptom of degeneracy/' 



His own religious feeling Nietzsche expressed in what he called 

 amor fati, the love of fate. " My formula for the greatness of a man/' 

 he says, "is amor fati: that he desire to have nothing except what he 

 has, not in the future nor in the past nor for all eternity. Not only 

 to submit to necessity, least of all not to hide it from himself — for 

 idealism is falsehood, mendacity in the presence of necessity — but to 

 love it." " Verily through many souls have I passed and through 

 hundreds of cradles and pains of labor. Many a farewell have I 

 spoken; I know the heart-breaking last hours. But my creative will, 

 my fate wills it so. Or to put it more honestly : such a fate is just 

 what my will desires. Will is a deliverer, that is the true doctrine 

 of will and freedom." " A new pride my I has taught me and that 

 I teach men : no longer to hide my head in the sand of heavenly things, 

 but to carry it freely, a head of earth, which realizes the purpose of 

 the earth. A new will I teach men: to desire this path which man 

 has blindly trod, and to call it good and no longer to steal away from 

 this path like the sick and dying." 



Nietzsche's estimate of the intellect, of knowledge, of philosophy 

 and science, of truth, is based on the same fundamental thought. The 

 will for power, the desire for life is what counts. Instinct, desire, will, 

 are better than knowledge or intelligence as such, or conscious intel- 

 ligence rather. The mind or intellect is merely an instrument in the 

 hands of instinct, of the will for life and power. " Behind your 

 thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty ruler, an unknown 

 sage — and his name is self. He dwells in your body, he is your 

 body." Your intellect or mind is the ' little reason/ it is the tool of 

 your body — the creating body created the mind as a hand of its will — 

 your body and its instincts is the ' big reason.' " I am wholly body 

 and nothing else; and soul is but a word for something belonging to 

 the body." " There is more reason in your body than in your wisest 

 wisdom." Mind or knowledge has value only in so far as it makes 

 for life, in so far as it helps you. Now truth does not always help you, 

 it is sometimes harmful; illusion sometimes helps you. If illusion 

 helps us, we want illusion. Nietzsche even goes so far in his opposition 

 to the popular view as to say that illusion is as necessary as truth. 

 " The falseness of a judgment," he says, " is no objection against a 

 judgment. The question is how far it preserves and promotes life, 

 preserves the species, perhaps even develops the species, and we are 

 inclined to assert on principle that the falsest judgments are the most 

 indispensable ones for us, that without assuming logical fictions man 

 could not live, that to give up false judgments would be to give up 

 life, to negate life." 



It is a prejudice of the philosopher that truth is more valuable 



