If we speak of the “essence of a house” and the “essence of a state,” we do not mean a generic type; rather we mean the ways in which house and state hold sway, administer themselves, develop and decay – the way in which they “essence” [Wesen]. Johann Peter Hebel in a poem, “Ghost on Kanderer Street,” for which Goethe had a special fondness, uses the old word die Weserei. It means the city hall inasmuch as there the life of the community gathers and village existence is constantly in play, i.e., comes to presence. It is from the verb wesen that the noun is derived. Wesen understood as a verb is the same as währen [to last or endure], not only in terms of meaning, but also in terms of the phonetic formation of the word. Socrates and Plato already think the essence of something as what essences, what comes to presence, in the sense of what endures. But they think what endures as what remains permanently [das Fortwährende] (aei on). And they find what endures permanently in what, as that which remains, tenaciously persists throughout all that happens. That which remains they discover, in turn, in the aspect [Aussehern] (eidos, idea), for example, the Idea “house.”