appeal to us. in that it transforms us into itself.

Because our goal is to experience, to be underway, let us give thought to the way today, in this lecture leading from the first over to the third lecture. But because most of you here are primarily engaged in scientific thinking, a prefactory remark will be in order. The sciences know the way to knowledge by the term "method." Method, especially in today's modern scientific thought, is not a mere instrument serving the sciences; rather, it has pressed the sciences into its own service. Nietzsche was the first to recognize this situation, with all its vast implications, and to give it expression in the notes that follow. These notes are found in his literary remains, as number 466 and 469 of The Will to Power. The first note runs: "It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science."

The other note begins with this sentence: "The most valuable insights are gained last of all; but the most valuable insights are the methods."

Nietzsche himself, too, gained this insight into the relation of method to science last of all—to wit, in the last year of his lucid life, 1888, in Turin.

In the sciences, not only is the theme drafted, called up by the method, it is also set up within the method and remains within the framework of the method, subordinated to it. The furious pace at which the sciences are swept along today—they themselves don't know whither—comes from the speed-up drive of method with all its potentialities, a speed-up that is more and more left to the mercy of technology. Method holds all the coercive power of knowledge. The theme is a part of the method.

But in thinking, the situation is different from that of scientific representation. In thinking there is neither method nor theme, but rather the region, so called because it gives its realm and free reign* to what thinking is given to think. Thinking abides in that country, walking the ways of that country. Here

* "die Gegend ... gegnet"; for Heidegger's own remarks on his use of the word, see his Discourse on Thinking (tr. J. M. Anderson & E. H. Freund; New York; Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 65-66. (Tr.)