domain of reality "above" them. Nature is higher than "the" gods. She, "the powerful," is still capable of something other than the gods: as the clearing, in her everything can first be present. Hölderlin names nature the holy because she is "older than the ages and above the gods." Thus, "holiness" is in no way a property borrowed from a determinate god. The holy is not holy because it is divine; rather the divine is divine because in its way it is "holy"; for Hölderlin also calls "chaos" "holy" in this stanza. The holy is the essence of nature. As the breaking day, nature unveils her essence in awakening.
And from high aether down to the abyss,
According to firm law, as once, begotten out of holy Chaos,
Inspiration, the all-creative,
Again feels herself anew.
This "and" which follows "awakening" does not lead to anything else that would perhaps take place outside of the awakening, for instance, as its consequence. The "and" initiates an essential unveiling of nature as what is awakening. In awakening, nature comes to herself. Inspired, she feels herself anew, "the all-creative." And that is now the name for all-present nature. The clear lets everything emerge into its appearance and illumination, so that everything real, set aflame by it, will stand in its own contour and measure. Thus distinguished in its own essence, all that appears is irradiated by spirit: in-spired. As the all-present, all-creative one, nature in-spires everything. She herself is inspiration. She can in-spire only because she is "spirit." Spirit holds sway as the sober, though daring, setting- apart-from-one-another which sets everything that comes to presence into the well-delineated boundaries and structures of its presence. Such a setting apart is essential thinking. The unique elements "of the spirit" are the "thoughts" through which everything, even what is set apart from one another, precisely belongs together. Spirit is the unifying unity. This unity lets the togetherness of everything real appear in its collectedness. The spirit is therefore essentially, in its "thoughts," the "communal spirit." The "communal spirit" is the spirit in the fashion of inspiration,