PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDE1CH NIETZSCHE. 725 



necessary to master it. Hence logic and the categories of reason are 

 simply a means of arranging the world for utility purposes, of arrang- 

 ing it so that we can handle it. But the philosophers have made the 

 mistake of regarding these categories, these formulas, these handy 

 forms, as criteria of truth, as criteria of reality; they have naively made 

 this human way of looking at things for the sake of preservation, this 

 anthropocentric idiosyncracy, the measure of iliings, the standard of 

 the ' real ' and ' unreal.' And in this way it came to pass that the 

 world was divided into a real world and a seeming world, and that the 

 very world to live in which man had. invented his reason, this world of 

 change, of becoming, plurality, opposition, contradiction, war, was 

 discredited and calumniated, that it, the real world, was called a 

 world of semblance, a mere appearance, a false world, and that the 

 invented fictitious world, the alleged world of permanence, the un- 

 changing, supersensuous world, the false world, was enthroned as the 

 true world. 



All we do know directly is the world of our desires and instincts, 

 and all our instincts may be reduced to the fundamental instinct — 

 the will for power. Every living being strives to increase its power 

 by vanquishing other beings; this is the 'law of life. Indeed, every 

 specific body strives to become master of the whole of space and to 

 extend its force (its will for power), and to repel everything that 

 resists its extension. But it constantly meets with similar strivings 

 of other bodies and ends by falling in line ('uniting'*) with those 

 that are sufficiently related to it — and they then conspire for power 

 together. The world is a monster of force without beginning or end, 

 a fixed iron quantity of power which does not become greater or 

 less, which is not used up, but transformed, a household without 

 income or outgo. And this world repeats itself forever and forever. 

 All things return eternally, Nietzsche teaches, and we ourselves with 

 them; we have been here before an infinite number of times and all 

 things with us; and we and all things shall come again eternally, shall 

 live over again the same lives even to the smallest details. The knot 

 of causes returns in which I am tied — that will create me again. I 

 shall come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with 

 this serpent — not to a new life or a better life or to a similar life, but 

 to this same life. " And this slow spider which is crawling along in 

 the moon-light, and this moon-light itself and I and you in the door- 

 way whispering to each other, whispering about eternal things — must 

 we not all have been here before ? and must we not all come back again, 

 and walk in that highway of eternity stretched out there before us, 

 in that long and hideous high-way must we not return eternally." 



These are the fundamental ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. As we 

 have seen there is a central thought running through his entire work, 

 an ideal, that is they key to his whole philosophy of life and helps us 



