The origin of thought, like that of feelings, cannot be traced: but that is no proof of its primordiality or absoluteness! It simply shows that we cannot get behind it, because we have nothing else save thought and feeling.
575.
To know is to point to past experience: in its nature it is a regressus in infinitum. That which halts (in the face of a so-called causa prima or the unconditioned, etc.) is laziness, weariness.
576.
Concerning the psychology of metaphysics—the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the greatest suffering (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the "real" world. Thus the passions have been step by step struck out, God posited as the opposite of evil—that is to say, reality is conceived to be the negation of the passions and the emotions (i.e. nonentity).
Irrationality, impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incalculable suffering). Consequently they denied this element in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute "rationality" and "conformity of means to ends."
Change and perishability were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with Spinoza: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm).
A nature overflowing and playing with energy, would call precisely the passions, irrationality and change, good in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc.
577.
Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza's artlessness and Descartes' likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita——