114 Nietzschea singular transparency. The drivenness of all living things is revealed to
conscious life, as is our own "revolting greed" and how "blindly and
madly" (1,378; SE § 5) we yearn to consume and destroy other life. Thus,
consciousness does not initially experience pleasure in the wodd of
appearances, but first encounters the torments of existence. Are we hit
with consciousness the way we catch a disease? Is natural existence the
least bit bearable in the mirror of consciousness? Is consciousness ulti-
mately a disaster? "In this sudden brightness, we gaze around us and
behind us and tremble: this is where the refined beasts of prey are run-
ning, and we are in their midst. The tremendous mobility of humans on
the great desert of the earth, their founding of cities and states, their
waging of war, their resdess assembling and scattering, their muddled
running, their copying of one another, their mutual outwitting and
stamping down, their cries of distress and their howls of joy in victory—
everything is an extension of their animality" (1,378; SE § 5).
Consciousness recoils at this sight of awakening from a daze and longs
to return to the "unconsciousness of instinct" (1,379; SE § 5). In the
everyday conduct of our lives, is it perhaps better "not to arrive at a state
of reflection" (1,379)? Reflection can work to undermine practical and
efficient realism. Nietzsche was compelled to wonder what purpose
nature had in opening men's eyes and having them see their existence
mirrored in human consciousness.
By posing this question, Nietzsche was affirming a teleology of
nature: "if all of nature presses toward man, it thereby intimates that
man is crucial to its redemption from the curse of animal existence and
that finally existence holds up a mirror to itself in which life no longer
appears senseless but rather comes into view in its metaphysical signifi-
cance" (1,378; SE § 5). What is this metaphysical significance?
Metaphysical significance is not universal harmony at the foundation
of things, nor is it an all-encompassing metaphysical order and justice,
but simply nature making "its only leap, which is a leap of joy" (1,380;
SE § 5) in life that has awakened to consciousness. Nietzsche continued
his teleologica! argument with the puzzling statement that "nature feels