236 Nietzsche
for a return to primitive nature. Man is an inventive animal that prom-
ises something to life in order to get somethingyhM* life in return. Man is
also an "imaginative animal" whose unique sense of pride originates in
the human penchant for fantasy. Humans have one more "condition of
existence" to fulfill than any other animal: "the human being needs to
believe, to know, from time to time, why he exists; his species cannot
thrive without periodic confidence in life! Without faith in the existence
of reason in life!" (3,372; GS% 1).
There is less to "reason in life" than meets the eye. It considers itself
absolute, but is actually only one thing among many. In the great "musi-
cal mechanism," it is a mere cog or bolt. It feels free, but remains tied to
the apron strings of nature. It regards itself as an achiever and yet is
merely an effect. Isn't that a laugh! But reason, for the sake of its self-
esteem, does not wish itself or its creativity to be laughed at. When
Nietzsche chimed in with his own laughter, he did not wish to mock rea-
son. The laughter in The Gay Science is not denunciatory. It recognizes and
even celebrates the human imagination, but keeps in mind that the
products of the imagination are in part pure invention. Nietzsche was
not out to attack, but to seek comic relief.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche discussed the "instinct to preserve the
species" (3,371; GS § 1), but he dodged the larger issues, implicit
throughout the book, of whether knowledge and the will to truth are
really subordinate to the "instinct to preserve the species," or whether
this will to truth might break free from life and even take aim against it.
Might the will to truth aspire to become the master of life instead of its
servant, even if the result is the destruction of life? Might there be a
dualism between the will to live and the preservation of the species, on
the one hand, and will to truth, on the other?
Nietzsche weighed the possibility of this sort of dualism in aphorism
§11. Consciousness, he concluded after examining pertinent studies of
physiology and evolutionary biology, is the consummate and ultimate
development of the organic, but it is still incomplete and fragile.
Humans should absolutely not rely on consciousness; otherwise they