result of the cell, but the cell is the result of the sensation, i.e., an artistic projection, an image" (Werke, IX, 194). Of the complications in such a view from the physiological standpoint Nietzsche is well aware—see Beyond Good and Evil, § 15.
c Nietzsche finds nothing really unchangeable in the world of chemistry—e.g., it is superficial to say that things so different as diamond, graphite, and coal are the same, simply because they have a common chemical substance and there is no loss in weight in the process of transformation (Will to Power, § 623).
d As to the pure ideality of straight lines, circles, numbers, see Human, etc., §§ 11, 18, 19; Werke, XIV, 34, § 68; 42-3, § 81; also p. 320 (the objects of mathematics "do not exist").
e The "I" is also spoken of as an attempt to simplify our infinitely complicated nature (Werke, XI, 291, § 335), and again as the result of a doubling process, as when we say "the lightning lightens" (ibid., XIV, 329, § 164).
f Even to a theologian like Heinrich Weinel, the soul is no longer a thing, a "simple and hence imperishable substance," such as science before Kant strove to demonstrate (op. cit., p. 6). Nietzsche finds as little "one soul" as "two souls" in our breast, rather "many mortal souls" (Werke, XIV, 37, § 75).
g As to the falsity of the outer world, Nietzsche sometimes uses strong language, but it is exact from his point of view: it is a "product of fantasy," a "world of phantoms," "poetry," "the primitive poetry of mankind" (Werke, XII, 36, § 69; 170, § 351; Dawn of Day, § 118). He thinks that whatever may be our philosophical standpoint [ordinary realism he hardly considers as a philosophical standpoint], this falsity (Irrthümlichkeit) is the surest and solidest thing we can still lay hold of (Beyond Good and Evil, § 34). Riehl asks (op. cit., p. 130) how we can speak of falsity, if we do not know the truth; but one is a negative, the other a positive judgment—Nietzsche himself observes that the destruction of an illusion does not of itself give us the truth, but may simply make the field of our ignorance wider (Werke, XIII, 138, § 318; Will to Power, § 603). The illusoriness of the physical world has been often asserted, e.g., by Hume, of whom Norman Kemp Smith says, "Hume's argument rests throughout on the supposition that perishing subjective states are the only possible objects of mind, and that it is these perishing states which natural belief constrains us to regard as independent existence. Such belief is obviously, on the above interpretation, sheer illusion and utterly false" (Mind, April, 1905, pp. 169, 170). See also Ralph Barton Perry's admirable statement of Hume's view, Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 138-9. It is curious that Nietzsche refers rarely to Hume, and but twice to a critical point in his philosophy, viz., his conception of causality (Werke, XIV, 27, § 49; XVI, 51). His general view, however, might well receive the epithet, "psychologism" with which Perry characterizes Hume's view—or even a stronger and still more barbarous one, viz., "biographism," for he says, "Man may reach out as far as he will with his knowledge and seem to himself as objective as possible—in the end he gets nothing from it but his own biography" (Human, etc., § 513).
h Simplification is spoken of as "the chief need" of organic existence, Werke, XII, 46, § 83; cf. 10, § 18. On the illusion of identity, see ibid., XIV, 22, § 38; 33, § 66; 35, § 70. Nietzsche had maintained early in his career that logic rested on presuppositions to which nothing in the actual world corresponds, e.g., that of the likeness of things, and that of the identity of the same thing at different points of time (Human, etc., § 11; The Wanderer etc., § 12; Werke, XI, 179, § 65).
i Error (i.e., opinions born of subjective need and posited as objective
