does not shelter and, in a certain sense, omits and passes over and loses—the human being cannot discover through its going along the paths of the soul.

However, does fragment 50 not state that the λόγος of the human soul is ὁμολογεῖν, and that this consists of a ‘listening to’ the Λόγος itself? Does this not clearly state of what the ‘termination’ of ψυχή consists? The soul as that drawing-in drawing-out ‘terminates there,’ i.e., it goes ‘out’ to the other, ‘over’ to the other, where this ‘termination’ [‘Aufhören’] is a ‘listening to’ [‘Hören auf’]—i.e., the ὁμολογεῖν as the self-gathering toward the originary gatheredness. Does this not then name the outermost reaches of the wanderings of its paths? Does this not state how deep the human λόγος is? The Λόγος as being itself [306] is surely and obviously that deep into which the far-reaching λόγος of the human soul points. So, how can fragment 45 state that it is precisely because of this far-reaching λόγος of the human soul that the human is unable to find the outermost reaches of his own essence, even if he were to traverse all paths? In ὁμολογεῖν; in the self-gathering harvesting of λόγος; in the self-gathering toward these, ‘the Λόγος’ is, i.e., it is present. Thus, in ὁμολογεῖν, precisely that toward which the essence of the human proceeds is found, and in such a way that all of its extremities terminate exactly there and gather themselves to the Λόγος as the originary for-gathering. However, according to fragment 50, ὁμολογεῖν neither happens on its own, nor does it happen constantly. Human listening does not easily gather itself toward the Λόγος: rather, it tends to run astray and disperse itself in such a way that it predominately listens to human speech and human utterances. If this were not so, Heraclitus could not specifically point toward the ceasing of the mere listening-to and listening-in-on of human speech in favor of engaging in a gathering of itself toward the Λόγος. Therefore, the λόγος of the essence of the human does not arrive at the outermost extremities of the soul easily: it does not arrive of itself or through itself, even though it, as λόγος, points toward that to which it alone, as λόγος, corresponds. Indeed, precisely when the human—entirely from out of himself and on his own initiative, selfishly and under his own authority—goes along all of his paths and seeks only along these paths, does he not arrive at the outermost extremities or follow the far-reaching λόγος.

If we reflect upon these considerations correctly and often, we must then infer that, through his λόγος, the human can be related to the Λόγος in ὁμολογεῖν, but that this is not always the case and, indeed, is so perhaps only rarely. Therein lies the strange fact that ‘the Λόγος’ in the sense of the originary for-gathering—that is, the Λόγος of being itself—presences to the human and that the human is nevertheless turned away from it. For the human, the presencing λόγος [307] is thus at the same time an absent one. Thus, what presences, which properly awaits the human, can also absence. What presences need not be present, and what is present need not thereby already be what presences. The human, by clinging only to what is present, can misjudge what presences, and in that misjudgment, lose it entirely. Therefore, precisely what concerns the human soul in its ground (i.e., in its

230    Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos