Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body

Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.

Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to deepen sleep.

Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he calls the one “the little sagacity” and the latter “the big sagacity.” Schopenhauer’s teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here. “An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest ‘spirit,’” says Zarathustra. From beginning to end it is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: Reason and Understanding.