do you not fear to be deceived in this way?—answers the theoretic man."[1] For all such warnings, however, the practical man goes on his way, and Nietzsche does not upbraid him. Truth may, of course, be useful,[2] but error may be useful too[3]—we have no guarantee that it is always the true that is helpful to life; there is no pre-established harmony between the two.[4] The illogical man has often been useful or even necessary—and so with the departure from perfect justice in judgments, so with error about the worth of life.[5] Illusions may be a source of force, and it might be well if there were two compartments in man's brain, one for illusions, the other for science to regulate them and keep them from doing harm.[6] Without two capital errors, belief in identity and belief in free-will, mankind, in any distinctive sense, would never have arisen—for, to mention only the second, its ground feeling is that man is free in a world of unfreedom, a marvelous exception, a superanimal, half a God.[7] Doubt, intellectual scrupulousness, only arise late, are always relatively weak factors in human life, and really can only be allowed a limited rôle there.[8] Philosophy itself—what has gone by that name—has ordinarily been animated by concern not so much for "truth," as for health, growth, power, life, and the future—Nietzsche knows that it is a daring proposition to throw out, but he ventures it.[9] Errors may even have a part in making reality—in making character, for instance, and in making history.[10] Pretend to a virtue (kindness, honor), and the result may be in time that you have it;[11] act on a belief, and you may win it—as Böhler said to Wesley, Preach the faith till you have it, and then you will
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 519.
- ↑ He even asks why, if science were not linked with the usefulness of what is known, we should concern ourselves about science (Mixed Opinions etc., § 98).
- ↑ Ibid., §§ 13, 26.
- ↑ Human, etc., § 517; cf. §§ 30, 36, 38, 227. He even says, "Error has made men out of animals [the reference is to the ideas of responsibility and free-will, see ante, p. 55]; is it possible that truth may turn man again into an animal?" (Human, etc., § 519).
- ↑ Ibid., §§ 31-3.
- ↑ Ibid., § 251.
- ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 12.
- ↑ Joyful Science, §§ 110, 121.
- ↑ Preface, § 2, to Joyful Science.
- ↑ Dawn of Day, §§ 115, 307.
- ↑ Ibid., § 248; cf. Joyful Science, § 356.
