Schemes for interpreting earthly phenomena must be devised which, though they do not require to be absolute or irrefutable, must yet favour the maintenance of the kind of men that devises them. Interpretation thus becomes all important, and facts sink down to the rank of raw material which must first be given some shape (some sense--always anthropocentric) before they can become serviceable. Even the development of reason and logic Nietzsche consistently shows to be but a spiritual development of the physiological function of digestion which compels an organism to make things "like" (to "assimilate") before it can absorb them (Aph. 510). And seeing that he denies that hunger can be a first motive (Aphs. 651-656), and proceeds to show that it is the amœba's will to power which makes it extend its pseudopodia in search of what it can appropriate, and that, once the appropriated matter is enveloped, it is a process of making _similar_ which constitutes the process of absorption, reason itself is by inference acknowledged to be merely a form of the same fundamental will. An interesting and certainly inevitable outcome of Nietzsche's argument appears in Aph. 516, where he declares that even our inability to deny and affirm one and the same thing is not in the least necessary, _but only a sign of inability._ The whole argument of Part I. tends to draw science ever nearer and nearer to art (except, of course, in those cases in which science happens to consist merely of an ascertainment of facts), and to prove that the one like the other is no more than a means of gaining some foothold upon the slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux. In the rush and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purposes of human orientation. In the torrent of evolutionary changes pillars must be made to stand, to which man can for a space hold tight and collect his senses. Science, like art, accomplishes this for us, and it is our will to power which "creates the impression of Being out of Becoming" (Aph. 517). According to this standpoint, then, consciousness is also but a weapon in the service of the will to power, and it extends or contracts according to our needs (Aph. 524). It might disappear altogether (Aph. 523), or, on the other hand, it might increase and make our life more complicated than it already is. But we should guard against making it the Absolute behind Becoming, simply because it happens to be the highest and most recent evolutionary form (Aph. 709). If we had done this with each newly acquired characteristic, sight itself, which is a relatively recent development, would also have required to have been deified.