space and time. For it could be that the essential origin of space and time lies concealed in what we are attempting to think in a unitary manner in the names locality and journeying. It is here too, then, that we would necessarily find the roots of the remarkable state of affairs that we indeed conduct ourselves high-handedly within space and time, and yet pay no heed to their essence. In order, however, that we do not err altogether within the realm we are now approaching. it may be permissible for us to pay attention to some provisional distinctions in a schematic fashion, that is, constantly with the aid of exaggerations and imprecisions.
Space and time comprise the framework for our calculative domination and ordering of the "world" as nature and history. This pervasive measurement of the world in a calculative, discovering. and conquering manner is undertaken by modern human beings in a way whose distinctive metaphysical feature is modern machine technology. Metaphysically, it remains undecided in this process whether this procedure on the part of modern human beings—a procedure of conquering space and of time-lapse—serves merely to bring about a position within the planet as a whole that secures this humanity a suitable "living space" for its lifetime, or whether such securing of space and time is intrinsically determined in such a far-reaching manner as to attain new possibilities of this procedure of conquering space and of time-lapse and to intensify this procedure. Metaphysically, it remains undecided whether, and in what way, this will to planetary ordering will set itself its own limit. And although, when we look at this process that has taken hold of all peoples and nations on this planet, it may seem from time to time as though modern human beings are becoming mere planetary adventurers, we also see here another, almost opposite phenomenon come to the fore: These moves to conquer space are linked to settlement and resettlement. Settlement as a countermove is a move toward being bound to a place. Yet here too our perspective is much too limited for us to be able to decide, or even to become mindful of whether a restriction on having adventures might entail our coming to be at home, or at least might be able to constitute a condition of such becoming homely.
Locality and journeying, however, in which the poetic essence of the rivers is announced, relate to becoming homely in what is one's own. And this is so in the distinctive sense that one's own, finding one's own, and appropriating what one has found as one's own, is not that which is most