SCHOLAR: In what you say, only the essence of waiting would be named as the essence of thinking, which unveils itself in this form as commemorating.
SCIENTIST: But how then does it stand with nearness and farness, within which the world opens up and veils itself, draws near and recedes?
SCHOLAR: This nearness and farness can be nothing outside the world.
GUIDE: Because the world, insofar as it worlds, gathers everything, each to the other, and lets everything return to itself in its own resting in the selfsame.
SCIENTIST: Then the world itself would be what nears and furthers.
SCHOLAR: The world would itself be the nearness of farness and the farness of nearness.
SCIENTIST: That sounds of course very dialectical; as if nearness and farness would have to be represented here as two ideas in one. [150] But they are not objects, and thus are not representable. This is, after all, what our meditation came to—if I followed along correctly.
GUIDE: Indeed.
SCHOLAR: Nearness is here not a part of its counterpart, farness. Nearness is that wherein and where-into farness draws near and so essentially occurs as farness. To this farness, which first arrives in nearness, corresponds only a comportment in which arrival is not preemptively anticipated as something present-at-hand, but rather is allowed as arrival.
SCIENTIST: We have come to know waiting as this comportment.
SCHOLAR: In terms of this waiting, we defined thinking as commemorating, distinguishing it from a mere representing.
GUIDE: Then what is the essence of thinking, if it is defined in terms of this comportment to the world, and if world is the nearness of farness?
SCIENTIST: Thinking would then be a kind of relationship [Verhältnis] and comportment [Verhalten] to nearness. How should we grasp this?
SCHOLAR: This probably no longer allows itself to be said in a single word. However, I know a word that until a moment ago still appeared to me as appropriate to name the essence of thinking and therewith also cognition in a fitting manner.
SCIENTIST: I would like to hear this word.
SCHOLAR: It is a word that occurred [einfiel] to me already in our first conversation. This idea [Einfall] is also what I had in mind when, at the beginning of our conversation today, I remarked that I had our first country path conversation to thank for a precious inspiration. In the course of today’s conversation I also often wanted to bring forth this [151] word. But each time, it seemed to me less suitable for what was coming nearer to us as the essence of thinking.
SCIENTIST: You are making a secret of your idea, as if you did not want to give away too early a discovery you yourself made.