Human, All Too Human 171specch, feelings, and thoughts all appear to be more than they really are.
If one delves into their origins, one winds up quite a long way off from
the dignity and truth of their pretensions.
For Nietzsche, therefore, the antimetaphysical, "scientific" principle
is based in a refusal to regard the originary, primary, and fundamental as
higher, more valuable, and richer. A person's stance on origins deter-
mines whether that person will proceed in a metaphysical or a scientific
manner. Metaphysics places a high value on lofty origins, whereas sci-
ence proceeds in the opposite fashion and works from the assumption
that the originary is nothing but a contingency and inertness from which
more subde, complex, meaningful structures can be developed. "All
things that live for a long time gradually become so saturated with rea-
son that their origin in nonreason thereby comes to seem improbable"
(3,19; Z>§ 1). Science should not be misled by the metaphysical illusion
of lofty origins. Platonism sought pure forms in origins. This Platonism,
as Nietzsche pointed out, is still evident in a philosophy that claims to
know what something is if it knows or can derive its origin. This type of
thinking values information about provenance over the essence of the
matter. "Glorifying the genesis—that is the metaphysical aftershoot that
. .. makes us imagine that in the beginning of all things lies everything
that is most valuable and essential" (2,540; HH 11 WS § 3). Once we have
transcended this "metaphysical aftershoot," a history is revealed that
neither originates in an estimable commencement nor attains the full-
ness of a goal. There is only a swarming mass with occasional pinnacles,
decline that spawns still other things, and so forth. Meaning, signifi-
cance, and truth do not lie at the beginning or the end. Reality is every-
thing that is in flux. And we ourselves are also in flux. We recognize
change and eventually realize that not only the objects of knowledge,
but the process of knowing is itself subject to change. All philosophers
share a "hereditary defect": they cannot grasp the fact "that the faculty
of knowledge has also evolved, while some of them even envision the
entire world spun out of this faculty of knowledge" (2,24; HHI § 2).
They are clearly conceding that the human faculty of knowledge has a