Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/209

Rh things which it works, a change so complete that we hardly know whether any of the original lineaments of things are left, is a proof of its reality.

Here then is something to start with. Nietzsche feels this power in himself and thinks that it is really the bottom thing in him; and as he is not solipsist, he thinks that there are similar centers of power in other men. And turning his thought to the world at large, the question arises, may not animals and plants and even insensate things be centers of power in varying measures and ways? May not the world in its real being be made up, not of "things," substances, subjects, egos, atoms, causes and effects, spatial quantities and movements, but of these centers of power more of less conflicting and struggling with one another? undefined Each being a will to power seeks to prevail, and is only prevented by others which want to do the same; each estimates all that is outside from its own standpoint, and to the extent it is conscious, builds up a world accordingly—images, concepts, categories, and all; each is real and its created world is real (at least, till another center of power puts an end to one or the other or both), and this is what and all that reality means. undefined The question as to the truth of the estimates or images or concepts, save as it is a question of what each can make good or can successfully act by, is irrelevant and without meaning, since estimations, images, concepts only exist in relation to the power which creates them and seeks to effectuate itself by their aid. Sensations, or rather the stimuli to which we react with sensations, become then construable, as a part of the effect which some outside center of power makes upon us—it is a kind of signal that another power is there. By the sensations, the memories we keep of them, and the ordered picture of the world we draw up, we know a little better how to act in relation to these unseen friends or foes. It is, however, only in the initial semi-physical contact that we are in direct, first-hand relation to them, and our sensations themselves need not have the slightest resemblance to the original realities. undefined