CHAPTER XV
ULTIMATE REALITY AS WILL TO POWER[1]
I have considered Nietzsche's general view of the world and of the law of recurrence in it—it remains now to state his conclusions as to its ultimate nature. They were reached (so far as they were reached) by a complicated process of arguing with himself, which it is not altogether easy to resolve. The way is labyrinthine—I have come near being lost in it myself. We have only notes preparatory to his final systematic treatise, not the treatise itself. I can only give the best results which I have been able to attain—perhaps even so I make him more consistent than he really was. The essential logic of his procedure (I do not mean the temporal order) appears to have been something like the following—at least I can best present his varying judgments or attributes under these heads:[2].
(1) The world (the world as we commonly understand it) is not real—the world of "science" as little as that of common sense.
(2) We make the world real, i.e., posit it as such, have to for life, and none the less delude ourselves.
(3) Is there any reality?
(4) Reality conceived as power and will to power.
I
The first proposition, the world is not real, is only a restatement and amplification of the view which was taking shape in his first period. The world of colors, sounds, resistances, etc., exists only in our mind or feeling.[3] Abstract the sensibilities of sentient beings, and it would disappear. We have no reason to suppose that our images of tree, stone, water, etc., faithfully reflect things outside us. They are our creation, in response to stimuli that come to us: to one stimulus we respond with color,
