realities) is, indeed, so much in possession of the field and has become so inwrought into the human constitution, that truth, even when it is born, can hardly live save in combination with it, being too forceless of itself (Werke, XII, 47, § 85; cf. XIV, 269, § 40, where is the strong statement, "as bloom belongs to the apple, so does falsehood belong to life"). Error of a certain sort is even spoken of as a presupposition of knowledge, e.g., ideas of "being," "identity," "substance," "permanence," the "unconditioned"; they are all "logical fictions" (Werke, XII, 23, § 39; 24, § 41; 46, § 82; 48, § 89; 208, § 442; XIV, 29, § 53; 31, § 59; Beyond Good and Evil, § 4) , but at the same time standards by which we measure and judge things. Though we have discovered our errors, we are often none the less obliged to act according to them and as if we believed them (Werke, XIII, 224, § 284)—they are imbedded in language and we cannot get rid of them (Werke, XI, 180, § 69; The Wanderer etc., § 11). Nietzsche himself frequently speaks of sensible phenomena as independent realities, like the rest of us.
j Knowledge (in this sense) may be something that only the philosopher, who is conceived of as the strongest type of man, can endure; Nietzsche distinguishes between what is necessary for the philosopher and for most men (Werke, XV, 1st ed., 294 ff).
k At the same time there is a note of pathos in saying this. It appears also in the exclamation, "Ah! we must embrace untruth, and now the error becomes lie and the lie a condition of life"! (Werke, XII, 48, § 87). He had said earlier, "A question lies heavy on the tongue and does not wish to be articulate: can man consciously hold to untruth, and, if he must, is not death preferable?" (Human, etc., § 34). I need scarcely say that Nietzsche does not mean that all illusions or errors are beneficial—he notes that some may be harmful, even if they make happy for a time (cf. Will to Power, §§ 453-4).
l How far a view of this sort resembles Pragmatism, I leave to those better acquainted with the latter than I to say. René Berthelot, while remarking that Nietzsche did not know the term Pragmatism, calls him the first to perceive distinctly a great part of the ideas currently so designated (Un romantisme utilitaire, p. 33; see, however, A. W. Moore's critical comment, Philosophical Review, November, 1912, pp. 707-9). Richard Müller-Frienfels finds expressed in Nietzsche "the thoughts which have grown into a system as Pragmatism in America, as Humanism in England, and which in Germany has much that is kindred to them, above all in the biological theory of knowledge of Mach, Avenarius, Jerusalem, Simmel, Vaihinger, and others" (Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, April, 1913, pp. 339-58). W. Eggenschwyler, on the other hand, emphasizes the contrasts between Nietzsche and James's views in an article, "War Nietzsche Pragmatist?" (ibid., October, 1912, pp. 35-47).
m See Will to Power, § 503, where it is said that the whole apparatus of so-called knowledge is an apparatus for abstracting and simplifying—its aim being not knowledge proper, but acquiring control. So practical interpretation is distinguished from explanation in ibid., § 604; and ordinary logic is treated as a falsifying process (proceeding as it does on the supposition of identical cases)—it does not come from a will to truth (ibid., § 512). At other times he departs from this strict conception of knowledge. In one place he even denies that there is any pure, will-less subject of knowledge (Genealogy etc., III, § 12); and in another he calls it a fatal mistake to posit a peculiar impulse to knowledge (which goes blindly after truth, without reference to advantage or injury), and then to separate from it the whole world of practical interests (Will to Power, § 423). But the inconsistencies are no greater than in his varying views of truth, and in effect correspond to them. Nietzsche does not reach a definitive position here, any more than at
