"My life and my fate are nothing; but the results of my life are of great importance. I am a priest of Truth; I am in the service of Truth; I feel under obligation to do, to risk, and to suffer anything for truth."
Nietzsche declares that this is shallow. Will for truth, he says, should be called "will to make being thinkable." Here, it seems to us, Nietzsche simply replaces the word "truth" by one of its functions. Truth is a systematic representation of reality, a comprehensive description of facts; the result being that "existence is made thinkable."
Nietzsche is in a certain sense right when he says that truth in itself is nothing; for every representation of reality must serve a purpose, otherwise it is superfluous and useless. And the purpose of truth is the furtherance of life. Nietzsche instinctively hits the right thing in saying that at the bottom of philosophy there is the will for power. In spite of our school-philosopher's vain declamations of "science for its own sake," genuine philosophy will never be anything else than a method for the acquisition of power. But this method is truth. Nietzsche errs when he declares that "the head is merely the intestine of the heart." The head endeavors to find out the truth, and the truth is not purely subjective. It is true that truth is of no use to a man unless he makes it his own; he must possess it; it must be part of himself, but he cannot create it. Truth cannot be made; it must be discovered. Since the scholar's specialized business is the elucidation of the method of discovering the truth—not its purpose, not its application in practical life—Fichte's ideal of the aim of scholarship remains justified.
Omit the ideal of truth in a philosophy, and it becomes an ignis fatuus, a will-o'-the-wisp, that will lead people astray. Truth makes existence thinkable, but thinkableness alone is not as yet a test of truth. The ultimate test of truth is its practical application. There is something wrong with a theory that does not work, and thus the self has a master, which is reality, the world in which it lives, with its laws and actualities. The subjective self must measure its worth by the objective standard of truth—to be obtained through exact inquiry and scientific investigation.
The will for power, in order to succeed, must be clarified by a methodical comprehension of facts and conditions. The contradictory impulses in one's own self must be systematized so that they will not collide and mutually annihilate themselves; and the comprehension of this orderly disposition is called reason.
Nietzsche is on the right track when he ridicules such ideals as "virtue for virtue's sake," and even "truth for truth's sake." Virtue and truth are for the sake of life. They have not their purpose in themselves, but their nature consists in serving the expansion and further growth of the human soul. This is a truth which we have always insisted upon and which becomes apparent when those people who speak of virtue for its own sake try to define virtue, or determine the ultimate standard of right and wrong, of goodness and badness. We say, that whatever enhances soulgrowth, thus producing higher life and begetting a superior humanity, is good; while whatever cripples or retards those aspirations is bad. Further, truth is not holy in itself. It becomes holy in the measure that it serves man's holiest aspirations. We sometimes meet among scientists, and especially among philologists, men who with the ideal of "truth for truth's sake," pursue some very trivial investigations, such, for example, as the use of the accusative after certain prepositions in Greek, or how often Homer is guilty of a hiatus. They resemble Faust's famulus Wagner, whom Faust characterizes as a fool
".... whose choice is
To stick in shallow trash for ever more,
Who digs with eager hand for buried ore,
And when he finds an angle-worm rejoices."
Thus there are many trivial truths of no importance, the investigation of which serves no useful purpose. For instance, whether the correct pronunciation of the Greek letter η; was ee or ay need not concern us much, and the philologist who devotes all his life and his best strength to its settlement is rather to be pitied than admired. Various truths are very different in value, for life and truth become holy according to their importance. All this granted, we need not, with Nietzsche, discard truth, reason, virtue, and all moral aspirations.
Nietzsche apparently is under the illusion that reason, systematic thought, moral discipline and self-control, are external powers, and in his love of liberty he objects to their authority. Did he ever consider that thought is not an external agent, but a clarification of man's instincts, and that discipline is, or at least in its purpose and final aim ought to be, self-regulation, so that our contradictory thoughts would not wage an internecine war? Thus, Nietzsche, the instinct-philosopher, appears as an ingenious boy whose very immaturity is regarded by himself as the highest blossom of his existence. Like an intoxicated youth, he revels in his irresponsibility and laughs at the man who has learned to take life seriously. Because the love of truth originates from instincts, Nietzsche treats it as a mere instinct, and nothing else. He forgets that in the evolution of man's soul all instincts develop into something higher than instinct, and the love of truth develops into systematic science.
Nietzsche never investigated what his own self consisted of. He never analyzed his individuality. Other-wise he would have learned that he received the most valuable part of his being from others, and that the bundle of instincts which he called his sovereign self was nothing but the heirloom of the ages that preceded him. In spite of his repudiation of any debt to others, he was but the continuation of others. But he boldly carried his individualism, if not to its logical conclusions, yet to its moral applications. When speaking of the Order of Assassins of the times of the Crusades, he said with enthusiasm: "The highest secret of their leaders was, 'Nothing is true, everything is allowed!'" And Nietzsche adds: "That indeed, was liberty of spirit; that dismissed even the belief in truth." The philosopher of instinct even regards the adherence to truth as slavery and the proclamation of truth as dogmatism.