Living nature has a quality of to-be-looked-at (as distinct from to-be-seen) independently of any gaze that is yet able to look at it, it is visually composed, and indeed this extends even to inanimate nature. We have learned that eyes have evolved many times and independently. At the same time there is that in nature which is concealed from any casual gaze and must be uncovered. All of this is prior to consciousness as we understand it. It is not that consciousness arises to meet this need to reality to be contemplated, but rather as an overflow of the intrinsic 'knowability', for want of a better word, of the real.