Daybreak and Grand inspiration 215realm of the numinous, formerly reserved for God, is now the concrete
reality of the individual. And just as our consciousness inevitably fails to
grasp God, the individual also eludes it Whatever is right in front of our
eyes—as well as everything that is quite remote—must remain lofty,
unfathomable, and mysterious. There is transcendence in both direc-
tions. The only firm ground is in the middle zones of socialized con-
sciousness. For this reason, we need to understand what Nietzsche calls
his "actual phenomenalism and perspectivism,^5 " namely that the world
of consciousness is "only a world of surfaces and signs, a generalized
and debased wodd, and that everything that becomes conscious in that
very process becomes shallow, thin, relative and dumb, general, a sign
and a distinguishing feature of the herd" (3,593; GS§ 354).
We should not, however, conclude that Nietzsche wished to retreat
into a preverbal unto mysûca with his "phenomenalism" and his refer-
ences to the communicative nature of consciousness. He would have
considered a retreat of that sort nothing but Romantic evasion. We can-
not step outside of our world of language and consciousness, nor is the
unspeakable a silhouette of the spoken and bespoken wodd. We per-
ceive what eludes the grasp of language as a phantom pain of language.
Language, which is aware of its limitations, becomes expansive. It
expands outward, seeking to compensate for its lack of being, and gets
enriched in the process. Nietzsche noted that the capacity for the
"power and art of communication" has accumulated to the point that
the "late born" might now squander it (3,591; GS§ 354). They may not
always hit upon the essence of the matter, because the essence can never
be captured perfecdy in language and consciousness. This "second"
communicated wodd, however, is also rich in its way. The games we play
with language and consciousness are inexhaustible, and even if they are
not "true," they still have the power to render themselves "true" in a sec-
ondary act. The world of language and consciousness of the in-between
is, after all, a wodd in which we live, act, and exist
Nietzsche was obviously grappling with a well-known quandary. If
we wish to describe the rich wodd of consciousness, we are, even on