nd apparently opposed
things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!
For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous
"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I
see such new philosophers beginning to appear.

3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between
their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of
conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and
it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to
learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As
little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process
and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his
instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and
its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak
more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite
mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may
be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things."

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is
here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic
judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that
without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of
reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be
a renunciation of life, a negation of life.