trees, birds and insects, grasses, and stones. If we are looking for a mighty being, then the earth is nearby. In the same way as the nearest mountaintop is in being <seiend>, so is the moon rising behind it, or a planet. In being is the surging swarm of people on an animated street. In being are we ourselves. In being are the Japanese. In being are Bach’s fugues. In being is the cathedral of Strasbourg. In being are Hölderlin’s hymns. In being are criminals. In being are the madmen in a madhouse.

Beings everywhere and anytime you like. Certainly. But how is it, then, that we know that each of these things that we so confidently list and count up is a being? The question sounds foolish; for after all, we can determine, in a way that any normal human being would find undeniable, that this being is. Granted. [Furthermore, there is no need here for us to use the words “beings” and “what is,” which are alien to ordinary language.] And we are not now contemplating casting any doubt on whether all these beings are in the first place—basing such a doubt on the supposedly scientific observation that what we are experiencing here is just our own sensations, and that we cannot get out of our own body, a body to which everything we have mentioned remains related. In fact, we would like to remark in advance that such considerations, which so easily and cheaply give themselves airs of being supremely critical and superior, are thoroughly uncritical.

Meanwhile, we let beings be, just as they swarm around us and assail us, elate us and depress us, in everyday life as well as in hours and moments of greatness. We let all beings be as they are. But if we behave in this way in the course of our historical Being-here, [59|82] spontaneously as it were and without ruminating over it, if we let each being be the being that it is, then in all this we must know what that means: “is” and “to be.”