We know that the destruction of an illusion does not necessarily produce a truth, but only one more piece of _ignorance;_ it is the extension of our "empty space," an increase in our "waste." 604. Of what alone can _knowledge_ consist?--"Interpretation," the introduction of a sense into things, _not_ "explanation" (in the majority of cases a new interpretation of an old interpretation which has grown incomprehensible and little more than a mere sign). There is no such thing as an established fact, everything fluctuates, everything, is intangible, yielding; after all, the most lasting of all things are our opinions. 605. The ascertaining of "truth" and "untruth," the ascertaining of facts in general, is fundamentally different from the creative _placing,_ forming, moulding, subduing, and _willing_ which lies at the root of _philosophy. To give a sense to things_--this duty always remains _over,_ provided _no sense already lies in them._ The same holds good of sounds, and also of the fate of nations they are susceptible of the most varied interpretations and turns, _for different purposes._ A higher duty is to _fix a goal_ and to mould facts according to it: _that is,_ the _interpretation of action,_ and not merely a _transvaluation_ of concepts. 606. Man ultimately finds nothing more in things than he himself has laid in them--this process of finding again is science, the actual process of laying a meaning in things, is art, religion, love, pride. In both, even if they are child's play, one should show good courage and one should plough ahead; on the one hand, to find again, on the other,--we are the other,--to lay a sense in things. 607. _Science_: its two sides:-- In regard to the individual; In regard to the complex of culture ("levels of culture") --antagonistic valuation in regard to this and that side. 608. The development of science tends ever more to transform the known into the unknown: its aim, however, is to do the _reverse,_ and it starts out with the instinct of tracing the unknown to the known. In short, science is laying the road to _sovereign ignorance,_ to a feeling that "knowledge" does not exist at all, that it was merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing; further, that we have not preserved the smallest notion which would allow us to class knowledge even as a _possibility_ that "knowledge" is a contradictory idea. We _transfer_ a primeval myth and piece of human vanity into the land of hard facts: we can _allow_ a thing-in-itself as a concept, just as little as we can _allow_ "knowledge-in-itself." The _misleading_ influence of "numbers and logic," the misleading influence of "laws." _Wisdom_ is an attempt to _overcome_ the perspective valuations (_i.e._ the "will to power"): it is a principle which is both unfriendly to Life, and also decadent; a symptom in the case of the Indians, etc.; _weakness_ of the power of appropriation. 609.