before us1 as interminably long. Yet only in thus 'coming before us'1 is the current world authentically ready-to-hand. The Objective distances of Things present-at-hand do not coincide with the remoteness and closeness of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. Though we may know these distances exactly, this knowledge still remains blind; it does not have the function of discovering the environment circumspectively and bringing it close; this knowledge is used only in and for a concernful Being which does not measure stretches-a Being towards the world that 'matters' to one [... Sein zu der einen "angehenden" Welt].
When one is oriented beforehand towards 'Nature' and 'Objectively' measured distances of Things, one is inclined to pass off such estimates and interpretations of deseverance as 'subjective'. Yet this 'subjectivity' perhaps uncovers the 'Reality' of the world at its most Real; it has nothing to do with 'subjective' arbitrariness or subjectivistic 'ways of taking' an entity which 'in itself' is otherwise. The circumspective de-severing of Dasein's everydayness reveals the Being-in-itself of the 'true world'-of that entity which Dasein, as something existing, is already alongside. 2
When one is primarily and even exclusively oriented towards remotenesses as measured distances, the primordial spatiality of Being-in is concealed. That which is presumably 'closest' is by no means that which [107] is at the smallest distance 'from us'. It lies in that which is desevered to an average extent when we reach for it, grasp it, or look at it. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the way of de-severance, its dealings always keep within an 'environment' which is desevered from it with a certain leeway [Spielraum]; accordingly our seeing and hearing always go proximally beyond what is distantially 'closest'. Seeing and hearing are distance-senses [Fernsinne] not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that Dasein as deseverant mainly dwells. When, for instance, a man wears a pair of spectacles which are so close to him distantially that they are 'sitting on his nose', they are environmentally more remote from him than the picture on the opposite wall. Such equipment has so little closeness that often it is proximally quite impossible to find. Equipment for seeing—and likewise for hearing, such as the telephone receiver—has what we have designated as the inconspicuousness of the proximally ready-to-hand. So too, for instance, does the street, as equipment for walking. One feels the touch of it at every step as one walks; it is seemingly the closest and Realest of all that is ready-to-hand, and it slides itself, as it
1 'vorkommt'; '"Vorkommen"'. In general 'vorkommen' may be translated as 'occur', and is to be thought of as applicable strictly to the present-at-hand. In this passage, however, it is applied to the ready-to-hand; and a translation which calls attention to its etymological structure seems to be called for.
2 'Das umsichtige Ent-fernen der Alltäglichkeit des Daseins entdeckt das An-sich-sein der "wahren Welt", des Seienden, bei dem Dasein als existierendes je schon ist.'