our science today is its ideallessness, its lack of a great love.[1] For it is man's task to set himself an end, and thereby a standard of value—above all is this the task of man at his highest, of the philosopher. The sciences are preliminary and preparatory to this supreme functioning—the solving the problem of value, the determining the order of precedence in values.[2] Genuine philosophers say, "So should things be"—they are commanders and legislators; they determine the Whither? and For what? of man, laying creative hands on the future, and turning all that is or was into means and instrument. Nietzsche puts it boldly, "Their 'knowing' is creating, their creating is a legislating, their will to truth is—will to power."[3] c That is (stating the matter in my own language), we human beings can observe, but we can also strive for that which is past all observing, since it is the projection of our minds and imagination, and belongs as yet among the viewless and, strictly speaking, non-existent things of the world. We can look at existence, whether ourselves or reality outside us, as so much matter, ὔλη, on which we are to impress a higher form. Science at its best is necessarily fragmentary—and equally so is history; if we limit ourselves to their report of things, we leave out the whole area of possibility. To quote Nietzsche's own words: "Man is something fluid and plastic—we can make out of him what we will."[4] Again, "In man is creature and creator in one: there is matter, fragment, superfluity, clay, excrement, unreason, chaos—but also creator, former, the hardness of the hammer, the contemplativeness of a God, and the glory of the seventh day."[5] Instead of Schopenhauer's doctrine of redemption from existence, Zarathustra (Nietzsche) gives us a doctrine of the re-creation of existence. Every fragmentary "it was" is to be changed into a "so I would have it":[6] the doctrine rests on a belief in the changeability of the world and in the power of men to make change.
Accordingly we feel—not always, but as a rule—an atmos-
