Thus from Hegel to Marx and Spengler we find the developing theme of a thought which, by the movement in which it is accomplished totality attained, violent recovery at the extreme point of poverty, solar decline curves over upon itself, illuminates its own plenitude, brings its circle to completion, recognizes itself in all the strange figures of its odyssey, and accepts its disappearance into that same ocean from which it sprang; in opposition to this return, which, even though it is not happy, is perfect, we find the experience of lderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, in which the return is posited only in the extreme recession of the origin in that region where the gods have turned away, where the desert is increasing, where the τεχν has established thedominion of its will; so that what we are concerned with here is neither a completion nor a curve, but rather that ceaseless rending open which frees the origin in exactly that degree to which it recedes; the extreme is therefore what is nearest.