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...the more the majority of men in the everyday world fall prey to mere appearance and to prevailing opinions concerning beings, and the more comfortable they become with them, feeling themselves confirmed in them, the more Being "conceals itself" (Janthanei) from man. The consequence for man of the concealment of Being is that he is overcome by lethe, that concealment of Being which gives rise to the illusion that there is no such thing as Being. We translate the Greek word lethe as "forgetting," although in such a way that "to forget" is thought in a metaphysical, not a psychological, manner. The majority of men sink into oblivion of Being, although-or precisely because they constantly have to do solely with the things that are in their vicinity. For such things are not beings; they are only such things ha nyn einai phamen, "of which we now say that they are." Whatever matters to us and makes a claim on us here and now, in this or that way, as this or that thing, is-to the extent that it is at all-only a homoioma, an approximation to Being.
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