Once when "Care" was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took a piece and began to shape it. While she was thinking about what she had made, Jupiter came by. "Care" asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, Jupiter forbade this and demanded that it be given his name instead. While "Care" and Jupiter were arguing, Earth (Tellus) arose, and desired that her name be conferred upon the creature, since she had offered it part of her body. They asked Saturn to be the judge. And Saturn gave them the following decision, which seemed to be just: "Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you should receive that spirit at death; and since you, Earth, have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since 'Care' first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called 'homo,' for it is made out of humus (earth)."
This pre-ontological document becomes especially significant not only in that "care" is here seen as that to which human Dasein belongs "for its lifetime," but also because this priority of "care" emerges in connection with the familiar interpretation of human being as a compound of body ( earth) and spirit. Cura prima finxit. This being has the "origin" of its being in care. Cura teneat, quamdiu vixerit: this being is not released from its origin, but is held fast and dominated by it, as long as this being "is in the world." "Being-in-the-world" has the character of being of" care." It does not get its name (homo) with regard to its being, but in relation to that of which it consists (humus). The decision as to wherein the "primordial" being of this creature is to be seen is left to Saturn, "time."6 The pre-ontological characterization of [199] the essence of human being expressed in this fable thus has envisaged from the very beginning the mode of being which rules its temporal sojourn in the world.
The history of the signification of the ontic concept of "cura" permits us to see still further fundamental structures of Dasein. Burdach7 calls our attention to an ambiguity of the term "cura," according to which it means not only "anxious effort," but also "carefulness,"
6. Cf. Herder's poem "Das Kind der Sorge," Suphan 29: 75.
7. "Faust und die Sorge," p. 49. Already with the Stoics, μέριμνα was a stable term, and it comes back in the New Testament, in the Vulgate, as sollicitudo. The direction followed in our existential analytic of Dasein toward "care" occurred to the author in connection with attempts at an interpretation of Augustinian, that is, Greek and Christian, anthropology with regard to lhe basic foundations attained in the ontology of Aristotle.