Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/73

Rh then that things appear more or less definitely here and there, now and then; how otherwise could they appear at all? Unquestionably there is a spatial and temporal order, but we ourselves bring the ideas to things that make the order possible.

The outcome of all this criticism is, so far as the question of ultimate truth goes, purely negative. At least, after becoming skeptical in regard to Schopenhauer's view that we have a real, first-hand knowledge of ourselves as will, Nietzsche is unable to advance any positive idea of reality at all. All that we are accustomed to call by this name is appearance, illusion. And yet a tentative speculation he does venture upon. It is a kind of panpsychism. We know indeed only our own sensations and thoughts and feelings—but what if the whole world is of this nature? May not the things outside us [Nietzsche never doubts that there are such things—he is never solipsist or thoroughgoing idealist] be themselves in some sense "centers of sensation"? Even so they might affect one another (each being conceived as a spring of energy). They might get habits by acting and reacting (ultimately from motives of pleasure and pain). They might even be called will. Causality is perhaps an idea formed from the action of the will, particularly as it reacts to stimuli. Space and time in turn hang on causality. And so might arise in general the sort of world we know. It is entirely a speculation—and confused and fragmentary at that; but perhaps it. should be mentioned in qualification of the sweeping negative language which I have just used. In some ways it is similar to a view which we shall find developed at length in the latter part of his life.