[Buddha-l] Cetana as a magically operating force?

[Joy Vriens]

Is anybody aware of a Buddhist reaction to Nietzsche's aphorism 127 
(book three) in his Gay Science?

"After-Effect of the most Ancient Religiousness.

 The thoughtless man thinks that the Will is the only thing that 
operates, that willing is something simple, manifestly given, underived, 
and comprehensible in itself. He is convinced that when he does 
anything, for example, when he delivers a blow, it is he who strikes, 
and he has struck because he willed to strike. He does not notice any 
thing of a problem therein, but the feeling of willing suffices to him, 
not only for the acceptance of cause and effect, but also for the belief 
that he understands their relationship. Of the mechanism of the 
occurrence, and of the manifold subtle operations that must be performed 
in order that the blow may result, and likewise of the incapacity of the 
Will in itself to effect even the smallest part of those operations he 
knows nothing. The Will is to him a magically operating force ; the 
belief in the Will as the cause of effects is the belief in magically 
operating forces. In fact, whenever he saw anything happen, man 
originally believed in a Will as cause, and in personally willing beings 
operating in the background, the conception of mechanism was very remote 
from him. Because, however, man for immense periods of time believed 
only in persons (and not in matter, forces, things, &c.), the belief in 
cause and effect has become a fundamental belief with him, which he 
applies every where when anything happens, and even still uses 
instinctively as a piece of atavism of remotest origin. The 
propositions, " No effect without a cause," and " Every effect again 
implies a cause," appear as generalisations of several less general 
propositions : "Where there is operation there has been willing? " 
Operating is only possible on willing beings." "There is never a pure, 
resultless experience of activity, but every experience involves 
stimulation of the Will " (to activity, defence, revenge or 
retaliation). But in the primitive period of the human race, the latter 
and the former propositions were identical, the first were not 
generalisations of the second, but the second were explanations of the 
first. Schopenhauer, with his assumption that all that exists is 
something volitional, has set a primitive mythology on the throne ; he 
seems never to have attempted an analysis of the Will, because he 
believed like everybody in the simplicity and immediateness of all 
volition : while volition is in fact such a cleverly practised 
mechanical process that it almost escapes the observing eye. I set the 
following propositions against those of Schopenhauer : Firstly, in order 
that Will may arise, an idea of pleasure and pain is necessary. 
Secondly, that a vigorous excitation may be felt as pleasure or pain, is 
the affair of the interpreting intellect, which, to be sure, operates 
thereby for the most part unconsciously to us, and one and the same 
excitation may be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Thirdly, it is only 
in an intellectual being that there is pleasure, displeasure and Will; 
the immense majority of organisms have nothing of the kind."

http://www.archive.org/stream/completenietasch10nietuoft/completenietasch10nietuoft_djvu.txt

Joy