This is to show how very _superficial_ all conscious phenomena really are; how an action and the image of it differ; how _little_ we know about what _precedes_ an action; how fantastic our feelings, "freewill," and "cause and effect" are; how thoughts and images, just like words, are only signs of thoughts; the impossibility of finding the grounds of any action; the superficiality of all praise and blame; how _essentially our_ conscious life is composed of _fancies_ and _illusion_; how all our words merely stand for fancies (our emotions too), and how the _union of mankind_ depends upon the transmission and continuation of these fancies: whereas, at bottom, the real union of mankind by means of procreation pursues its unknown way. Does this belief in the common fancies of men really _alter_ mankind? Or is the whole body of ideas and valuations only an expression in itself of unknown changes? _Are there_ really such things as will, purposes, thoughts, values? Is the whole of conscious life perhaps no more than _mirage_? Even when values seem to _determine_ the actions of a man, they are, as a matter of fact, doing something quite different! In short, granting that a certain conformity of means to end might be demonstrated in the action of nature, without the assumption of a ruling ego: could not _our_ notion of purposes, and our will, etc., be only a _symbolic language_ standing for something quite different--that is to say, something not-willing and unconscious? only the thinnest semblance of that natural conformity of means to end in the organic world, but not in any way different therefrom? Briefly, perhaps the whole of mental development is a matter of the _body:_ it is the consciously recorded history of the fact that a _higher body is forming._ The organic ascends to higher regions. Our longing to know Nature is a means by virtue of which the body would reach perfection. Or, better still, hundreds of thousands of experiments are made to alter the nourishment and the mode of living of the _body_: the body's consciousness and valuations, its kinds of pleasure and pain, are _signs of these changes and experiments. In the end, it is not a question concerning man; for he must be surpassed._ 677. _To what Extent are all Interpretations of the World Symptoms of a Ruling Instinct._ The _artistic_ contemplation of the world: to sit before the world and to survey it. But here the analysis of æsthetical contemplation, its reduction to cruelty, its feeling of security, its judicial and detached attitude, etc., are lacking. The artist himself must be taken, together with his psychology (the criticism of the instinct of play, as a discharge of energy, the love of change, the love of bringing one's soul in touch with strange things, the absolute egoism of the artist, etc.). What instincts does he sublimate?