In the operation of Darwin's biological law there are many forces at work. That is to say, once the fact of existence is established, numerous forces can be found at work within the limits of existence. We know that the forces of nature—acting within the medium of existence which is an a priori condition—are rarely unified and directed toward the same result. In short, they are not reciprocal. To the contrary, they work more often against each other—they are antagonistic. Immediately a war of forces takes place; and it is this war that constitutes all action in nature. A force in nature directed at another force calls forth a resistance and counter-force; and this instinct to act and to resist is in itself a will to act. Otherwise, inertia would be the condition of life, once mere existence was assured by the fittest. But life is not inert. Even when certain organisms have accomplished the victory for existence, and are no longer moved by a necessity to struggle for mere being, the will to action persists; and this will to action, according to Nietzsche, is the will for power, for in every clash of forces, there is an attempt on the part of each force to overcome and resist the antagonistic one. The greater the action, the greater the antagonism. Hence, this tendency in all forces to persist is at bottom a tendency of self-assertion, of overcoming counter-forces, of augmenting individual power. Wherever this will to persist is found, Nietzsche argues that the will to act is present; and there can be no will to act without a will to power, because the very desire for existence and development is a desire for power.
This, in brief, is Nietzsche's doctrine applied to the organic and inorganic world. In its application to the ideological world, the reasoning is not changed. In ideas Nietzsche finds this same will to power. But in them it is the reflection of the principle inherent in the material world. There is no will inherent in ideas. This assumption of a reflected will to power in the ideological world is one of Nietzsche's most important concepts, for it makes all ideas the outgrowth of ourselves, and therefore dependent on natural laws. It does away with the conception of supernatural power and with the old philosophical belief that ideas are superior forces to those of the organic and inorganic world. Nietzsche once and for all disposes of the theory that there is anything more powerful than force, and by thus doing away with this belief, he rationalises all ideas and puts thought on a tangible and stable basis. In the opening section of the present book where he applies the will to power to scientific research, the whole of this new theory is made clear, and I advise the student to read well this section, for I have been unable to present as clear and complete an expositional statement of it in Nietzsche's own words as I would have liked to do, owing to the close and interrelated manner in which these notes were written.
Volume II of "The Will to Power" is in two books. The first is called "The Principles of a New Valuation"; the second, "Discipline and Breeding." The first book is divided into four sections—"The Will to Power in Science," "The Will to Power in Nature," "The Will to Power as Exemplified in Society and in the Individual" and "The Will to Power in Art." The second book has three divisions—"The Order of Rank," "Dionysus" and "Eternal Recurrence." Of the first section of Book One, "The Will to Power in Science," I have already spoken. In this section Nietzsche shows how arbitrary a thing science is, and how closely related are its conclusions to the instinct of the scientists, namely: the instinct of the will to power. Scientists, he holds, are confronted by the necessity of translating all phenomena into terms compatible with the struggle for persistence and maintenance. A fact in nature unaccounted for is a danger, an obstacle to the complete mastery of natural conditions. Consequently the scientist, directed and influenced by his will to power, invents explanations which will bring all facts under his jurisdiction and control, and will thereby increase his feeling of power. As a result, the great facts of life are looked upon as of secondary importance to their explanations, and science becomes, not an intelligent search for knowledge, but a system of interpretations tending to increase the feeling of mastery in the men directly connected with it. Thus the law of the will to power, as manifest in the organic and inorganic world, becomes the dominating instinct in the ideological world as well.
It is well to speak here of truth as Nietzsche conceived it. We have seen how he denied its absolutism and declared it to be relative. But in his present work he goes further and contends that the feeling of the increase of power is the determining factor in truth. If, as we have seen, the "truths" of science are merely those interpretations which grow out of the scientists' will to power, then truth itself must be the outgrowth of this instinct. That which makes for the growth and development of the individual—or in other words, that which increases the feeling of strength—is necessarily the truth. From this it is easy to deduce the conclusion that in many instances truth is a reversal of facts, for preservation very often consists in an adherence to actual falsity. Thus, the false causality of certain phenomena—the outcome of logic engendered by a will to power—has not infrequently masqueraded as truth. Nietzsche holds that this doctrine contains the only possible definition of truth; and in this doctrine we find an explanation for many of the apparent paradoxes in his teachings when the matter of truth and falsity are under discussion.
The second part of the first book relates to the will to power in nature, and contains the most complete and lucid explanation of Nietzsche's basic theory to be found anywhere in his writings. This section opens with an argument against a purely mechanical interpretation of the world, and a refutation of the physicists' concept of "energy." The chemical and physical laws, the atomic theory and the mechanical concept of movement, he characterises as "inventions" on the part of scientists and researchers for the purpose of understanding natural phenomena and therefore of increasing their feeling of power. The apparent sequence of phenomena which constitutes "law" is, according to Nietzsche, only a "relation of power between two or more forces"—a matter of interdependence, a process wherein the "procession of moments do not determine each other after the manner of cause and effect." In these observations we see the process of reasoning with which Nietzsche refutes the current methods of ascertaining facts and the manner in which he introduces the principle of will to power into the phenomena of nature.
It is in this section that Nietzsche discusses at length the points of divergence between his life principle and that of Darwin. And it is here also that he treats of the psychology of pleasure and pain in their relation to the will to power. This latter statement is of great importance in an understanding of the instincts of life as he taught them, for it denies both pleasure and pain a place in the determining of acts. They are both, according to him, but accompanying factors, never causes, and are but second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value. He denies that man struggles for happiness. To the contrary, he holds that all expansion and growth and resistance—in short, all movement—is related to states of pain, and that, although the modern man is master of the forces of nature and of himself, he is no happier than the primeval man. Why, then, does man struggle for knowledge and growth, knowing that it does not bring happiness? Not for existence, because existence is already assured him. But for power, for the feeling of increased mastery. Thus Nietzsche answers the two common explanations of man's will to action—the need for being and the desire for happiness—by his doctrine of the will to power.
The entire teaching of Nietzsche in regard to classes and to the necessity of divergent moral codes to meet the needs of higher and lower castes, is contained in the third part of the first book. Here again he emphasises the need of two codes and makes clear his stand in relation to the superior individual. As I have pointed out in preceding chapters, Nietzsche did not attempt to do away with the morality of the inferior classes. He saw that some such religious belief as Christianity was imperative for them. His fight was against its application to all classes, against its dominance. I mention this point again because it is the basis of the greatest misunderstanding of Nietzsche's philosophy. Part III is written for the higher man, and if this viewpoint is assumed on the part of the reader, there will be no confusion as to doctrines encountered. The statements in this section are in effect similar to those to be found in Nietzsche's previous works, but in every instance in the present case they are directly related to the will to power. Because of this they possess a significance which does not attach to them in antecedent volumes.
The whole of Nietzsche's art theories are to be found in Part IV, "The Will to Power in Art." It is not merely a system of æsthetics that occupies the pages under this section, for Nietzsche never divorces art from life itself; and the artist, according to him, is the superior type, the creator of values. The concepts of beauty and ugliness are the outgrowths of an overflow of Dionysian power; and it is to the great artists of the past, the instinctive higher men, that we owe our current concepts. The principle here is the dominant one in Nietzsche's philosophy in relation to valuing:—to the few individuals of the race are we indebted for the world of values. To the student who wishes to go deeply into Nietzsche's ideas of art and his conception of the artist, and to know in just what manner the Dionysian and Apollonian figure in his theories, I unhesitatingly recommend Anthony M. Ludovici's book, "Nietzsche and Art."
The first section of the second book in this volume contains some of Nietzsche's finest writing. Its title, "The Order of Rank," explains in a large measure what material comprises it. It is a description of the various degrees of man, and a statement of the attributes which belong to each. No better definition of the different classes of men is to be found anywhere in this philosopher's writings. One part is devoted to a consideration of the strong and the weak, and the way in which they react on one another; another part deals with "the noble man" and contains (in Aphorism 943) a list of the characteristics of the noble man, unfortunately too long a list to be quoted in the present chapter; another part defines "the lords of the earth"; another part delineates "the great man," and enumerates his specific qualities; and still another part treats of "the highest man as law-giver of the future." This section, however, is not a mere series of detached and isolated definitions, but an important summary of the ethical code which Nietzsche advanced as a result of his application of the doctrine of the will to power to the order of individual rank.
The two remaining sections—"Dionysus" and "Eternal Recurrence"—are short, and fail to touch on new ground. There are a few robust and heroic passages in the former section which summarise Nietzsche's definitions of Apollonian and Dionysian; but in the latter section there is nothing not found in the pamphlet called "The Eternal Recurrence" and in "Thus Spake Zarathustra." I do not doubt that Nietzsche had every intention of elaborating this last section, for he considered the principle of recurrence a most important one in his philosophy. But, as it stands, it is but a few pages in length and in no way touches upon his other philosophical doctrines. If importance it had in the philosophy of the superman, that importance was never shown either by Nietzsche or by his critics.