Whatever this is it is one instance out of many millions of life as it appears to itself, and if science is to be believed it rests upon or emerges out of many billions of instances of striving life which do not appear to themselves. In no way is it a quirk of the individual but the individual is the prism through which it shows up... Shows up? The metaphor is of emergence, of arrival, as in a coming into the light, entering a clearing, coming out from behind a curtain, acquiring distinctness and so on, but none of these metaphors should apply since in all the paradigms they rest on it is already assumed that there is an awareness, a watcher, an eye or an ear, for it to appear to, which appreciates it. It does not matter which sense it awakens, but that the sense was somehow already present, that it preceded the manifestation, was waiting for this moment, and that its centre is elsewhere. What arises together with the individual as the final refinement of its drive to exist is the project of understanding itself, as if its purpose is to systematically assimilate its every contingency to universal self-transparency, as if its self-consciousness is merely the glimmering dawn of another self-consciousness, fully adequate to itself, always already present but unknowing. Thus either the striving takes place because of the appearance or else the appearance is not appearance but only an artefact of a blind striving. The second alternative seems incoherent since even the illusion of an appearance is an appearance, it has the futility of Descartes' evil genius, and if we enjoy speculation about it it is precisely for the sake of that enjoyment. But the first alternative is not much better. We strive, but if what we strive for exists then it is indifferent to our striving which can only approach it without ever getting any closer.