In contrast, “to be” is not senseless in this way. Likewise, “to be,” when written and seen, is different at once from “kzomil.” This written mark is also a sequence of letters, of course, but we are unable to think anything by it. There is no such thing as an empty word—only one that is worn out, yet remains full. The name “Being” retains its naming power. The slogan, “Away from this empty word ‘Being,’ toward the particular beings!” is not only an overhasty but a highly questionable slogan. Let us reflect on all this once again by means of an example, which, however, like every example that we can adduce in the field of our question, can never clarify the entire state of affairs in all its scope, and thus remains subject to some reservations.

Instead of the universal concept “Being,” we will consider, as an example, the universal representation “tree.” If we are now to say and define what the essence of a tree is, we turn away from the universal representation, to the various species of trees and individual examples of these species. This procedure is so selfevident [61|85] that we are almost embarrassed to make special mention of it. However, the matter is not quite that simple. How are we supposed to discover the much-invoked particular, the individual trees as such, as trees—how are we supposed to be able even to look for such things as trees, unless the representation of what a tree is in general is already lighting our way in advance? If this universal representation “tree” were so completely indefinite and confused, if it gave us no sure directive in our searching and finding, it could happen that instead of trees, we took cars or rabbits as the determinate particulars, as examples of a tree. Even though it may be correct that in order to determine more precisely the essential multiplicity of the essence “tree,” we must go through the particular, it remains at least equally correct that the illumination of the essential multiplicity and of the essence takes hold and progresses only when we conceive and know more originally the universal essence “tree,” and this then means the essence “plant,” and this means the essence “living thing” and “life.”