Thus goes the body
through history,
a becomer and fighter.

And the spirit
— what is it to the body?
Its fights’
and victories’
herald, its companion
and echo.

Nietzsche/Zarathustra refers time and time again to the wisdom of the body. Our body is ‘ground zero’ the basis for our relation to external reality. An ongoing theme is admonition to attend to what the body is “saying”. Our spirit, our personality is an echo of the condition of one’s body.

Similes, are all names
of good and evil;
they do not speak out,
they only hint.
One is a fool who seeks
knowledge from them!

A simile is a linguistic comparison, a method to intensify, to illuminate what is intended, for example: ‘strong as a lion’. We label our assessments, our valuations of external reality by such word-image-metaphors. They are hints, clues pointing to what we mean to say. “they only hint.” Thus you and I are fooled to assume a substantive, literal good or literal evil from such word images. They are not the “thing” but only a lens, a manner of speaking. The body has recourse alone to the images which the mind provides to “make sense” of experience. Language is the preeminent homo sapiens tool.

Give heed, my brothers,
to every hour when your spirit
would speak in similes:
there is the origin of your virtue.

Elevated is then your body, and raised up;
with its delight, it enraptures the spirit;
so that it becomes creator,
and valuer,
and lover,
and everything’s benefactor.

When your heart overflows
broad and full like the river,
a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders:
there is the origin of your virtue.

Attend to your body admonishes Zarathustra. Trust and depend upon your body! Your body instructs you, offers a reliable sense that is uniquely yours. What is yours, is none other than what you love and what you hate. To some your sense will be perceived as a blessing, and to some a danger, but it’s your virtue.

When you are exalted above praise and blame,
and your will would command all things,
as a loving one’s will:
there is the origin of your virtue.

When you despise pleasant things,
and the effeminate couch,
and cannot repose far enough from the effeminate:
there is the origin of your virtue.

When you are willers of one will,
and when that change of every need
is needful to you:
there is the origin of your virtue.

Truly, a new good and evil is it!
Truly, a new deep murmuring,
and the voice of a new fountain!

Power is it, this new virtue;
a ruling thought is it,
and around it a subtle soul:

a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.

A centered, self-actualized human being is to have become marked by a single will, – to will one thing. I have known a few individuals, just a few who impressed me as invigorated by a singular passion. Such a unity of mind, body, and spirit is a lifetime’s achievement, an earned confidence, to be satisfied that one’s personal judgment is a sufficient standard. That is power, having nothing at all to do with the conventional notions of good and evil.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Bestowing Virtue, Part 2, No. 22

I believe it’s time for a tune. Would you not agree? How would we select anything but Eclipse by Pink Floyd. Note carefully the lyric. Wait for the last two lines of the song…

In the silence what do you hear?