e right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders
of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform.

15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on
the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the
idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes!
Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as
heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world
is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external
world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves
would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a
complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something
fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work
of our organs--?

16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are
"immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition
of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold
of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any
falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the
object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate
certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself,"
involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may
think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher
must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in
the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the
argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible:
for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be
something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the
part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,'
and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by
thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided
within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether
that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In
short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the
present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to
determine what it is; on account of this retrospective con