Nietzsche on abstracting spirit from flesh
To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to
learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own
bodies,—and thus be dumb.
“Body am I, and soul”—so saith the child. And why should one not speak
like children?
But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: “Body am I entirely, and
nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.”
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace,
a flock and a shepherd.
An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which
thou callest “spirit”—a little instrument and plaything of thy big
sagacity.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.