§ 708 (becoming in not appearance; it is perhaps the world of being that is appearance).
v By will Nietzsche means not so much a fixed entity or faculty, as a moving point—he speaks of "Willens-Punktationen" that continually increase or lose their power (ibid., § 715). Again, though a who that feels pleasure and wills power (i.e., a single subject) is not necessary, there must be contrasts, oppositions, and so relative unities (ibid., § 693). When Nietzsche rejects will as illusion (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 19), Richter remarks that he has in mind the consciously aiming will, conceived as something simple (op. cit., p. 225). On the other hand, Nietzsche uses will distinctly in the sense of something that selects and accomplishes (Will to Power, § 662) , and expressly dissents from Schopenhauer's view of the will as desire and impulse merely—will, he says, deals with ordinary impulses as their master (ibid., §§ 84, 95, 260, 668). Still he does occasionally speak of will to power as desire (ibid., § 619). Ultimately it is neither a being or a becoming, but a pathos—from which a becoming or an action results (ibid., § 635; cf. Werke, XIII, 210, § 483).
w I am compelled to borrow here from Riehl (op. cit., p. 60). Indeed, Nietzsche still says that the view that every object seen from within is a subject, belongs to the past (Will to Power, § 474; he probably means a conscious subject, or else uses subject in the technical sense already criticised). On the other hand, in ibid., § 658, he speaks of "thinking, feeling, willing in all that lives," and in Zarathustra, IV, xi, he comes near popular animism in speaking of the pine tree as reaching after power, commanding, victorious, etc.—though the language may be taken as poetical.
x Julius Bahnsen, an early follower of Schopenhauer, seems to have had a similar view, reality being taken by him as "a living antagonism of mutually crossing forces or acts of will" (Der Widerspruch, I, 436) . The term "Voluntarism," Rudolf Eisler says, was first used by Ferdinand Tönnies in 1883, Paulsen in 1892 having brought it into currency (zur Geltung); cf. Eisler's Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, art., "Voluntarismus" Wundt's view, as stated by Külpe (Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Deutschland, 3d ed., pp. 102-3), and also the reasoning by which he arrives at it, are in general like Nietzsche's: "All ideas (Vorstellungen) of objects rest on an effect that the will experiences; it suffers in that it is affected, and it is [in turn] active in that the suffering stirs it to an idea-producing activity. The object, however, that affects the ego is in itself unknown. We can only infer from our experience that what causes (erregt) suffering must itself be acting. Since there is absolutely no other activity known to us than that of our will, we can trace our suffering back only to some foreign will, and so what happens in general to the reciprocal action of different wills. The world may therefore be interpreted as the totality of will-activities, which in the course of their determination of one another … come to arrange themselves in a developmental series of will-unities of varied content."
y If we bear this in mind, we may to a certain extent explain Nietzsche's apparently contradictory views as to the place of conscious will in man (and in the world in general). He uses "will" sometimes in the sense of conscious will, in which sense it is not universal or elementary (cf. Dawn of Day, § 124), but again as practically identical with natural forces, the urge and inner ground of all life and activity. In his view, consciousness plays little part in physiological adaptations and organization—it is a fitful, broken, atomistic thing at best and more a resultant than a cause (cf. Will to Power, §§ 523, 526). It comes when there is need of it, and is used by deeper forces that may in turn dispense with it, when it has done its work. It is these deeper forces that are will
