many and the few in number, but rather in their manner of Being and discoursing. The masses are undisciplined; they let themselves get caught up in whatever is going on, disperse themselves in arbitrariness, and blather about all sorts of possibilities and impossibilities, even though discourse and language pertain to the gathered, that which belongs together, the constant, and the delimited.
Whoever wishes to hold himself apart from the arbitrariness and unrestraint of opinions must inquire into the connectedness of beings. That is, he must fit into and take shelter in the structure and law of things and, accordingly, stand in the discipline of language. Such a person should not debase discourse and abuse it in blather.
We take from this saying a threefold lesson:
1. On the essence of λόγος: it is gathering, and it pertains to the With and the Together of beings.
2. On the essence of Being: it is ξυνουσία, co-presence {Mitanwesenheit} of the one and the other, structure and assignation.
3. λόγος, as what gathers, relates to nothing other than beings; and precisely because of this—because it gathers in itself the structure or jointure of beings—it enjoins beings, it contains the rules, and thereby itself becomes the measure and the law.14
Language is the law-giving gathering and therefore the openness of the structure of beings. We now see without difficulty the connection between language, λόγος, and truth, ἀλήθεια. The setting-out and setting-fast that collects is a setting-forth, and thereby makes things visible and reveals them. Consequently, it is a happening in which something previously inaccessible and veiled is torn from its concealment and set into un-concealment, ἀλήθεια, that is, truth.
h) Language as λόγος and as μῦθος
Here we must take notice: λόγος as such means, for its part, only a very particular experience and conception of the essence of language. The Greeks also know a second and older one: language and word as μῦθος.
But here the word does not have the collecting force, the force that, as it were, braces itself against beings and stands firm against them. As μῦθος [usually translated as “myth” or “story”], the word that comes upon human beings is that word that indicates this and that about the entirety of human Dasein. It is not the word in which human beings give their account of things, but rather the word that gives them a directive.
The word as μῦθος gives clues and indicates; the word as λόγος takes hold and brings itself and human beings into the clear. Language
14. N.B.: λόγος, “reason”—apprehensibility of essence, νοῦς; Parmenides.