If, however, this discordant character belongs to being itself, and constitutes its essential character, then being cannot be split in the sense of a destruction of its essence. What is discordant must then be held together in the unity of an essence. But we would be overhasty to speak directly about an essential discordance of being, and to presume to decide about the essence of being solely on the grounds of the double character of the "is" (that it announces itself at once as emptiness and surplus). Above all, we resist the temptation to take this emerging discordance within being as the occasion for a dialectical accounting of being, and thus to choke off all reflection. We want at first only to carry out a reflection, and so to clarify our relation to the being of beings. We concern ourselves with this clarification of our relation to the being of beings in order first to come into position to perceive, with a certain clarity, the claim of that saying: μελέτα τὸ πᾶν.
From the just-completed reflection, however, we first discern this about being: Being is the emptiest and at the same time a surplus, out of which all beings, those that are familiar and experienced as well as those unfamiliar and yet to be experienced, are granted their respective modes of being.
If we follow this indication of being in all beings, we immediately find that being is encountered in every being uniformly and without difference. Being is common to all beings and thus is the most common.
The most common is without every distinction: the stone is, the tree is, the animal is, and man is, the "world" is, and God "is." Against this thoroughly "uniform" "is," and in contrast to this uniformity and leveling of being, many levels and ranks show themselves within beings, which themselves allow the most diverse arrangements. We can progress from the lifeless, from dust and sand and the motionlessness of stone,to the ‘living™ of plants and animals, beyond this to free men, and yet beyond this to demigods and gods. We could also reverse the order of rank among beings and declare what one ordinarily calls "spirit’ and the "spiritual" to