[2] W. P., Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends." See also Z., III, LVI.
[1. The World "without form" and "void."]
For, in the beginning, the world was "without form" and "void," things surrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably the same number of impressions as they do now—and perhaps more—but these impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither calculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3] them to his fellows.
Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the things of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination, organization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process, however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs of thinking man.
Everything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some place; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the terms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a position relative to humanity.
Perhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of every creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and recorded.[4] But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied primeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order that he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a thing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must be given a name, a place, an order, a meaning—however arbitrary, however fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic, bewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5] organized, classified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims and needs of a particular kind of man.
Thus interpretation was the first activity of all to thinking humanity, and it was human needs that interpreted the world.[6]
The love of interpreting and of adjusting—this primeval love and desire, this power of the sandboy over his castles; how much of the joy in Life, the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow in Life, does not depend upon it! For we can know only a world which we ourselves have created.[7]
There was the universe—strange and inscrutable; terrible in its strangeness, insufferable in its inscrutability, incalculable in its multifariousness. With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or a shower might be anything to man—a godlike friend or a savage foe. The dome of blue behind was also prodigious in its volume and depth, and the stars upon it at night horrible in their mystery.