it to use, and thus implies many possible turns. Thus Plato's definition of the nature of thought is not identical with that of Leibniz, though it is the same. They belong together in that both reveal one basic nature, which appears in different ways.
But the fateful character of being destined to such thinking, and thus that destiny itself, will never enter our horizon so long as we conceive the historic from the start only as an occurrence, and occurrence as a causal chain of events. Nor will it do to divide the occurrences so conceived into those whose causal chain is transparent and comprehensible, and others that remain incomprehensible and opaque, what we normally call "fate." The call as destiny is so far from being incomprehensible and alien to thinking, that on the contrary it always is precisely what must be thought, and thus is waiting for a thinking that answers to it.
In order to be equal to the question what, by prevailing doctrine, is called "thinking," we simply have to risk asking the question. This implies: we must submit, deliver ourselves specifically to the [169] calling that calls on us to think after the manner of the λόγος. As long as we ourselves do not set out from where we are, that is, as long as we do not open ourselves to the call and, with this question, get underway toward the call—just so long we shall remain blind to the mission and destiny of our nature. You cannot talk of colors to the blind. But a still greater ill than blindness is delusion. Delusion believes that it sees, and that it sees in the only possible manner, even while this its belief robs it of sight.
The destiny of our fateful-historic Western nature shows itself in the fact that our sojourn in this world rests upon thinking, even where this sojourn is determined by the Christian faith—faith which cannot be proved by thinking, nor is in need of proof because it is faith.
But this, that we hardly discern the destiny of our nature,