SCHOLAR: And what is that?
GUIDE: The art—or the forbearance, or whatever you would like to call it—of speaking together in conversation.20
SCIENTIST: That is easily attained if you just always deal with the matter at issue [die Sache].
SCHOLAR: One learns matter-of-factness [Sachlichkeit] best in the sciences.21
GUIDE: But now what if a conversation is only concerned with first of all finding the matter?
SCHOLAR: Then it is of course more difficult to remain within a matter- of-fact attitude [sachlich].
SCIENTIST: Especially for your kind of thinking. In the high-altitude flight of your speculative thoughts, you too easily lose sight of the object.
GUIDE: I would be grateful to you if you would more precisely instruct me with regard to this roaming away.
SCIENTIST: With pleasure, with the greatest pleasure even; for I believe that we will thereby at the same time finally come back to our path. To this end I might recall the point at which you last drove us once again onto a bypath.
SCHOLAR: Namely by doubting our characterization of the distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities.
SCIENTIST: We came to this distinction in view [47] of the natural scientist’s exceptional dedication to the object.
SCHOLAR: Yet this in no way constitutes the proper topic of our conversation. And I must confess that, with the back and forth of objections, considerations, answers, and surmises, the coherence of the conversation has for me now completely disappeared.
SCIENTIST: I am afraid that you are making the gathering more difficult for yourself in that you want to hold on to all the accessory details. The topic lies clearly before our eyes. We are inquiring into the essence of thinking with the guiding thread of thinking in physics.
SCHOLAR: And so whatever else came to be spoken of belongs more to the ornamentation of the conversation.
SCIENTIST: Aptly said. If we finally want to pursue our matter in an orderly fashion and stringently analyze our topic, we must in the future abstain from ornamentations.
20. The word for “conversation” is Gespräch, which may be thought to imply a “gathering” (Ge-) of speaking (Sprechen) or language (Sprache).—Tr.
21. Sachlichkeit is commonly translated as “objectivity,” a term which is reserved here for Objektivität. The word “sciences” here translates Wissenschaften, which includes the social sciences (Sozialwissenschften) and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) as well as the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften).—Tr.