III
Undoubtedly all this has a materialistic sound, and yet when we notice Nietzsche's ultimate philosophical views, we find that he is as far from materialism as ever.[1] This material organization on which our higher life is dependent is itself only statable in mental terms. Matter—the popular (and perhaps I might add, the popular scientific) notion of some kind of permanent self-existing substance—is illusory; it is as much an error as the God (being) of the Eleatics.[2] We deal with phenomena (mental images) in the whole range of our knowledge. One set of them is connected with another set—that is all we can say. We speak of cause and effect, but we simply describe in this way—we explain nothing. m The quality resulting from every chemical process is as much a wonder after as before; so is a continuation of motion; nobody has "explained" push. And how could we explain? We deal only with things that do not exist, i.e., lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces, all our own pictures and creations. Science is a humanizing of things—it is ourselves we learn to describe more accurately, as we describe things and their succession. Possibly, yes probably, there never is such a doubleness as we imply in speaking of cause and effect—there being before us in reality a continuum, from which we isolate now this piece and now that—just as, on the other hand, we think that we perceive motion, when we only conclude it, what we perceive being only isolated points. Our very imagery of cause and effect may thus prevent insight into the real connection.[3] All this is said by Nietzsche in general, but it applies to the point now in hand and shows that the assertions of the dependence of the mind upon the body must not be taken too literally. n
The fact is, so far as Nietzsche can see at present, we cannot get out of our mental being to explain it. Having concluded, after his analysis of Schopenhauer's metaphysical pretensions, that we do not know reality, but only our sensations or pictures
