At first it seemed as though this were just an exercise in thought, a distinction among arbitrarily juxtaposed terms.

We will now repeat the points in the same formulation, and see to what extent what we have said has maintained its direction according to these points of orientation and has reached the insight we were seeking.

1. In the separations we have considered, Being is delimited against some other, and thus already has a determinateness in this re-trictive setting of a limit.

2. The delimitation happens in four simultaneously interrelated [153|209] respects. Thus, the determinateness of Being must correspondingly be ramified and heightened.

3. The distinctions are by no means accidental. What is held apart by them belongs together originally and tends toward a unity. Hence, the separations have their own necessity.

4. Therefore, the oppositions that initially strike us as mere formulas did not come up on arbitrary occasions and enter language as figures of speech, as it were. They arose in the most intimate connection with the definitive Western shaping of Being. They had their inception with the inception of philosophical questioning.

5. Yet these distinctions have not remained dominant only within Western philosophy; they pervade all knowing, doing, and speaking, even when they are not expressed explicitly or in these words.

6. The sequence in which we listed the terms already gives an indication of the order of their essential connection and of the historical sequence in which they were shaped.