By means of this shadow the modern world extends itself out into a space withdrawn from representation, and so lends to the incalculable the determinateness peculiar to it, as well as a historical uniqueness. This shadow, however, points to something else, which it is denied to us of today to know (Appendix 14). But man will never be able to experience and ponder this that is denied so long as he dawdles about in the mere negating of the age. The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self-deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment.
Man will know, i.e., carefully safeguard into its truth,19 that which is incalculable, only in creative questioning and shaping out of the power of genuine reflection. Reflection transports the man of the future into that "between" in which he belongs to Being and yet remains a stranger amid that which is (Appendix 15). Hölderlin knew of this. His poem, which bears the superscription "To the Germans," closes,
How narrowly bounded is our lifetime,
We see and count the number of our years.
But have the years of nations
Been seen by mortal eye?
If your soul throbs in longing
Over its own time, mourning, then
You linger On the cold shore
Among your own and never know them?20
19. Wissen. d.h., in seine Wahrheit ve.rwahren, wird dey Mensch, Here the verb wissen (to know); strongly emphasized by its. placement in the sentence, is surely intended to remind of science (Wissenschaft) with whose charaderization this essay began. On such knowing-an attentive beholding that wah:hes OVer and makes manifest-as essential to the chiU' acteriZing of science as such, see SR 180 ft.
20. Wahl ist enge begrenzt unsere Lebenzeit,
Unserer Jahre Zahl sehen und zahlen wir,
Doch die Jahre der Volker,
Sah ein sterblkhes Auge sie?
Wenn die Seele air auch über die eigene Zeit
Sich die sehnende schwingt, trauernd verweilest du
Dann am kalten Gestade
Bei den Deinen und kennst sie nie.