506.
In the beginning images how images originate in the mind must be explained. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words—the assembling of several pictures into a whole which is not for the eye but for the ear (word). The small amount of emotion which the "word" generates,—that is, then, which the view of the similar pictures generates, for which one word is used,—this simple emotion is the common factor, the basis of a concept. That weak feelings should all be regarded as alike, as the same, is the fundamental fact. There is therefore a confusion of two very intimately associated feelings in the ascertainment of these feelings;—but who is it that ascertains? Faith is the very first step in every sensual impression: a sort of yea-saying is the first intellectual activity! A "holding-a-thing-to-be-true" is the beginning. It were our business, therefore, to explain how the "holding-of-a-thing-to-be-true" arose! What sensation lies beneath the comment "true"?
507.
The valuation, "I believe that this and that is so," is the essence of "truth." In all valuations, the conditions of preservation and of growth find expression. All our organs and senses of knowledge have been developed only in view of the conditions of preservation and growth. The trust in reason and its categories, the trust in dialectics, and also the valuation of logic, prove only that experience has taught the usefulness of these things to life: not their "truth." The prerequisites of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt at all concerning all essential values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true, not that it is true.
"The real world and the world of appearance"— I trace this contrast to the relation of values. We have posited our conditions of existence as the attributes of being in general. Owing to the fact that, in order to prosper, we must be stable in our belief, we developed the idea that the real world was neither a changing nor an evolving one, but a world of being.
(e) The Origin of Reason and Logic.
508.
Originally there was chaos among our ideas. Those ideas which were able to stand side by side remained over, the greater number perished—and are still perishing.