for today RELIGION 173• Let us beware ! - Let us beware of thinking the world is a living being. Whither should it spread itself ? What should it nourish itself with ? How could it grow and multiply ? We know indeed more or less what the organic is : and shall we interpret the unspeakably derivative, late, rare, chance phenomena which we perceive only on the surface of the earth into the essential, universal, eternal, as they do who call the universe an organism ? I find that disgusting. Let us likewise beware of believing the universe is a machine ; it is certainly not constructed so as to perform some operation, we do it far too great honour with the word machine . Let us beware of presupposing that something so orderly as the cyclical motions of our planetary neighbours are the general and universal case ; even a glance at the Milky Way gives rise to doubt whether there may not exist far more crude and contradictory motions, likewise stars with eternally straight trajectories and the like. The astral order in which we live is an exception ; this order and the apparent permanence which is conditional upon it is in its turn made possible by the exception of exceptions : the formation of the organic. The total nature of the world is, on the other hand, to all eternity chaos, not in the sense that necessity is lacking but in that order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom and whatever other human aesthetic notions we may have are lacking. Judged from the viewpoint of our reason, the unsuccessful cases are far and away the rule, the exceptions are not the secret objective, and the whole contraption repeats its theme, which can never be called a melody, over and over again to eternity _ and ultimately even the term unsuccessful case is already a humanization which contains a reproof. But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe ! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites : it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these ; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind ! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements ! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind ; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities : there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress. When you realize that there are no goals or objectives, then you realize, too, that there is no chance : for only in a world of objectives does the word chance have any meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species. {...} [ GS 109 ] 174• The four errors. - Man had been reared by his errors : first he never saw himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imaginary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional, so that now this, now that human drive and state took first place and was, as a consequence of this evaluation, ennoble. If one deducts the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness and human dignity . [ GS 115]
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:53:38 +0000
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