than, for example, a downpour of rain; different still are the endings of a tree, or of an animal. No living being ends at the limits of its corporeal surface—this is not the limit circumscribing the living being. But the endings of that which, like the soul, is in itself an emerging drawing-in drawing-out, must surely have this character of reaching-out into the open; the πείρατα are the outermost extremities in the strictest sense of the word, which here means the ways and paths of going-out. The word πεῖρας appears in the plural form. The ψυχή has several, indeed, many extremities, many paths of going-out, all of which are meant. Every perceiving, every visualization, every willing and every remembering, every be-thinking, every be-holding, is a striving, a movement toward …, the being underway of a way; but also, every involving oneself with something, every sojourning, is a pause on the treading of paths. However, all going, in turn, is only what it is within and on the basis of a barely intuited and determinate dwelling of the human whose site conceals itself. There is everywhere, in all that is thoroughly pervaded by the soul— i.e., in all doing and letting, all bearing and enacting, all musing and striving, all falling and ascending—a reaching-out toward the extremities. However, Heraclitus says to the human whose soul—that is, whose unfolding life—is named here, ‘you cannot find the outermost of this going-out and reaching-out, even if you were to tread every single path.’ That there is still specific talk of “paths” here only confirms what was just now said: namely, that we should not grasp the extremities as objectlike ends and boundaries akin to a wall or a room-divider, but rather that we should pay attention to the way-like and path-like nature of everything that is determined by the soul. But even this does not suffice if we fail to think the way-like and pathlike as the Greeks did: namely, as the going-out into the open, as the going-through in the manner of a going-forth that enacts itself in going and gathers [305] what presences and is encountered. The “ways” are the paths for the courses of the unconcealing emerging and the concealing returning-into-itself. But why is it that the human cannot find the outermost extremities of his essence? Because the λόγος of the human soul is so “deep”—οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει.

Much was said about the essence of this deep already at an earlier point, and as we can now see, it was done so in anticipation of this saying of Heraclitus’s. The essence of the deep does not lie in it being the opposing category to the high. The essence of the deep lies in a concealed reaching into a still unmeasured farness of concealment and occlusion. Therefore, we do not translate βαθύς as “deep,” but rather as “far-reaching” and “having reached far,” phrases which, like all words of translation, need an accompanying interpretation in view of that in reference to which they are being said. βαθύς—having reached far, far-reaching—is being said about the λόγος of the human soul.

In the soul of the human—i.e., in the essence of the human—there unfolds a far-reaching harvesting and a gathering that has reached far. Whereabouts this gathering, which draws-out and draws-in, reaches; what this gathering in its essence actually shelters (i.e., as safeguarding and sheltering)—or rather, what it