Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

THE DEFINITION OF A SIGN MUST BE PRESUPPOSED, as given in Summulae I, ch. 4: a sign is “that which represents something other than itself to a cognitive power.” We gave this definition in a sufficiently general way to include every kind of sign, both formal and instrumental. For the common definition usually circulated among theologians at the beginning of Sentences IV,¹ from Augustine,² “A sign is that which, besides the appearances it presents to the senses, makes something else come to be known,” applies only to an instrumental sign.

In our definition, then, two things enter into the common account of a sign. First is the account of manifesting or representing. Second is an order toward something else, namely the thing represented, which must be distinct from the sign—for nothing is a sign of itself or signifies itself—and toward the power to which it manifests and represents a thing distinct from itself.

Manifesting as such clearly does not signify a relation. First, it can be preserved in relation to itself and without a relation to something else, as when light manifests itself, or when an object represents itself in order to be seen, and so on. Second, something can manifest something else without depending on it, but rather with the other depending on it, as principles manifest conclusions, light manifests colors, and God manifests creatures to sight, as the more learned theologians teach in the First Part, qq. 12 and 14. In these cases, one thing illuminates and manifests another without dependence or subordination to the thing manifested.

But the manifestative character of a sign is found together with an order toward something else, since nothing signifies itself, although it can represent itself; and it is found with dependence, since a sign is always inferior to the signified thing and depends on it as on its measure.

WE ASK, THEREFORE, whether this formal account of a sign consists first and per se in a relation according to being, or in a relation according to being said, that is, in something absolute that grounds such a relation.

What a relation according to being said and a relation according to being are, and what a transcendental and a predicamental relation are, was explained in q. 17, “On Relation.”³ Here we are speaking of a relation according to being, not a predicamental relation, because we are speaking of sign in general, insofar as it includes both a natural sign and a conventional sign; the latter also involves a sign that is something of reason, namely a conventional sign. Therefore, it cannot be a predicamental being or a predicamental relation, although it can be a relation according to being, in keeping with the teaching of St. Thomas explained in the First Part, q. 28, a. 1, and in the same q. 17. Only among things that are “toward something” is there found both a real relation and a relation of reason. It is clear that this relation is not predicamental, but is called a relation according to being because it is purely a relation and signifies no absolute thing.

THEREFORE, SOME AUTHORS think that the account of sign in general does not consist in a relation according to being toward the signified thing and the power, but in a relation according to being said, or in something absolute that grounds that relation. They assign as the account of sign its being something that leads cognition toward something else. For this seems to be the foundation of sign according to St. Thomas in Sentences IV, d. 4, q. 1, a. 1,⁴ where he says that the account of sign in a character is founded on something, because a sign, besides the appearances it presents to the senses, makes something else come to be known. Therefore, a sign does not formally consist in a relation but in the foundation of a relation. And this power to lead toward the knowing of something else is nothing other than the account of representation or manifestation itself—not in its entire breadth, which also includes representing itself, but insofar as it is restricted to manifesting something else. In this respect it regards a power as an object, in the same order and line as an object; but an object does not consist in a predicamental relation to a power or in dependence on it.

LET THERE, THEN, BE ONE CONCLUSION: Formally speaking, the account of sign does not consist in a relation according to being said, but according to being.

I said “formally speaking” because materially and presuppositionally it signifies the account of manifesting or representing something else, which certainly does not signify only a relation according to being, as we shall show shortly. Formally, however, the account of sign does not signify only the account of representing something else, since many things represent or manifest something else without doing so in the manner of a sign—for example, God represents creatures, every cause represents its effect, principles manifest conclusions, and light manifests colors—yet these do not have the account of sign. Therefore, representing something else is indeed required for a sign, but the sign does not consist in this alone. It adds to representation and formally signifies representing something else in an inferior or dependent way, depending on the very thing signified and, as it were, taking its place. Thus it regards the signified thing not merely as something manifested and illuminated by itself, but as the principal knowable thing and its own measure, in whose place it is substituted and whose office it performs in leading the power to know.

In the conclusion we add that it consists in a relation according to being, leaving aside for now whether the relation is real or of reason; we shall treat that in the following article. Thus we use a term common to both kinds of relation, and do not speak only of a determinate real relation or relation of reason.

Having explained the conclusion in this way, we derive it first FROM THE TEACHING OF ST. THOMAS. For St. Thomas expressly posits that a sign belongs to the genus of relation founded on something else. But a relation founded in being belongs to the predicament “toward something,” if it is real. Therefore, a sign consists in a relation according to being.

The inference is valid. The minor premise is taken from St. Thomas’s teaching in the fourth book addressed to Hannibald, d. 4, single question, a. 1,⁵ where he says “that it is the nature of relation always to be founded in some other genus of being.” Therefore, a relation founded in some other genus is distinguished from a transcendental relation and a relation according to being said, because these relations are not distinguished from the other genera of being, as was shown in the question on Relation. For they are not pure relations, but absolute entities ordered toward or dependent on something else, as we proved more fully in q. 17, “On Relation.”⁶ Therefore, a relation founded in some other genus of being is always a relation according to being, and if it is real, it will be predicamental.

The major premise is clearly proved from St. Thomas himself, both in the passage just cited and in Sentences IV, d. 4, q. 1, a. 1,⁷ and the Third Part, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3. There, after giving the argument that a sign belongs to the genus of relation and therefore a character belongs to the genus of relation, since it is a sign, he replies that a sign signifies a relation founded on something; since the relation of the sign of a character cannot be founded immediately in the essence of the soul, it must be founded in some added quality, and the character consists in this quality prior to the relation of sign. St. Thomas therefore holds that the relation of sign is a relation founded on something else. If it were only a relation according to being said or a transcendental relation, St. Thomas would not deny that a character consists in such a relation, since a quality can indeed be a relation according to being said—for example, knowledge is related to its object, and every act or habit is related to what specifies it. Since he posits the character in a quality and excludes it from relation, he certainly excludes it from predicamental relation and relation according to being, that is, from the predicament of relation. For he would not sufficiently exclude it from a relation according to being said by positing it in the predicament of quality, since a relation according to being said is also found there. But St. Thomas places the account of sign in that relation from which he excludes the character. Therefore, it is clear that he constitutes the account of sign in a relation according to being, or predicamental relation.

The BASIS of this conclusion is drawn from the very nature and quiddity of a sign. For the account of sign does not consist merely in representing or manifesting something other than itself, but in a particular way of manifesting: representing something else in an inferior way in relation to it, as something less principal in relation to what is more principal, as something measured in relation to its measure, as something substituted and performing the office of that for which it is substituted and whose office it performs. But the relation of what is measured to its measure, and of what substitutes to what is principal, is a predicamental relation. Therefore, the relation of sign to the signified thing is predicamental.

The minor premise is clear, since the relation of what is measured to its measure is a relation of the third kind in the predicament of relation, as was proved above in q. 17.⁸ The major premise is also clear, because the relation of sign, insofar as it is sign, directly regards the signified thing as what is principally to be known, toward which it leads the power. For this is the purpose of a sign: to be a means and substitute in place of the signified thing, which it intends to manifest to the power, since the thing is not made known through itself but through such a means. Hence, if the thing manifests itself, the account and office of sign cease. A sign, then, regards the signified thing as something substituted in its place, serving and ministering to it, and measured by it; the better a sign signifies, the more closely it is related to the signified thing in itself. Nor is this sufficiently explained by a transcendental relation, insofar as a sign signifies some connection with the signified thing and manifests it by reason of that thing; this is required, but is not sufficient. For although a son is an effect of his father and, under the account of effect, regards him transcendentally, nevertheless, as a son—that is, as similar to another in the account of procession—he signifies not a transcendental relation but a predicamental relation according to being. Likewise, although a sign, as manifestative and representative, regards the signified thing transcendentally, insofar as it signifies the account of what is measured and substituted in relation to the signified thing, and as it were ministers to it as principal, it regards it by a relation according to being.

From this we discern the difference between the account of what manifests and what signifies: what manifests principally regards a power as the terminus toward which it tends or which it moves. Likewise, representing something to a power is completed merely by making something present to the power in a knowable way; according to St. Thomas, On Truth, q. 7, a. 5, ad 2,⁹ this is nothing other than containing the likeness of something else. This containment of a likeness can occur without any relation according to being. First, because such containment can be a perfection simply and without any dependence on the thing represented, as God represents creatures in ideas. Second, because this containment is preserved and exercised even when the terminus does not exist, and consequently without a predicamental relation, as is clear in the representation of a future or past thing. Third, because this representation pertains to the account of moving a power, to which the object is made present through representation. Hence, it belongs per se and directly to the object to be represented. An object, however, does not consist in a relation according to being to a power; indeed, properly speaking, it does not regard a power or depend on it, but the power depends on the object, for it takes its specification from the object. Therefore, representing and manifesting do not consist in a relation according to being.

But to signify, or to be significant, is taken directly through an order toward the signified thing, for which it is substituted and whose office it performs as the means by which the signified thing is led to the power. For in this way a sign ministers and serves the signified thing, conveying and presenting it to the power as what is principally presentable. Likewise, in the case of a minister and a substitute for another, we consider two things: subjection to the other, whose office it performs as principal, and the effect for which it ministers and performs that office. Thus, although a sign in representing regards a power in order to manifest the signified thing to it, since it is assigned and taken up for this effect, and although in this precise respect it need not consist in a relation according to being to the power, nevertheless, in its subordination to the signified thing, insofar as it regards that thing as principal and as its own measure, it necessarily must consist in a relation to it, just as a slave signifies a relation to a master, and a minister or instrument to its principal.

YOU WILL OBJECT: A sign does not regard the signifiable thing as a mere terminus, but as the object of its signification; therefore, it does not consist in a pure relation but in a transcendental order, just as a power and knowledge regard an object, and yet the object measures the knowledge and power.

But against this: a sign does not regard the signified thing merely as an object or matter with which it deals, as a power and knowledge regard their objects. Rather, it regards it as a substitute for the signified thing, performing its office and taking its place in representing it to a power. Since a sign directly signifies this substitution and subrogation in relation to something else, it is formally something relative to that for which it is substituted. A power and knowledge, however, do not signify this relation to the object, but signify an account of a principle and power operating with respect to something; formally speaking, this is not a relation, since operating does not belong to a relation, whereas being a substitute is a relation. Thus, knowledge and a power, an act and a habit, regard an object as their measure fundamentally, not relatively and formally as a sign does; a sign is formally something subordinated and inferior to the signified thing, performing its office. The teaching of St. Thomas serves this point in the First Part, q. 13, a. 7, ad 1, where he says “that some relatives are imposed to signify the relation itself, such as master and servant, father and son, and the like; these are called relatives according to being. Others are imposed to signify things that certain relations follow from, such as mover and moved, head and headed; these are called relatives according to expression.” Therefore, knowledge and a power signify the thing itself and a principle, to which a relation to such objects follows; but a sign directly signifies a relation to the signified thing, to which it is subordinated as a deputy to its principal.

From this you will learn the basis for distinguishing a power or light, which is the power’s virtue, from a species. Both deal with an object, but a species does so as performing the office of the object and containing it as its substitute, whereas a power does so as tending toward the apprehension of the object. Hence, between a power and an object, the proportion of something acquiring something to a terminus that is acquired is sufficient; this is the proportion of a principle of motion to its terminus. A species, however, must be proportioned to the object as something that substitutes for it and performs its office. Thus, if it perfectly and adequately performs its office, it requires a complete proportion in the being of what can be represented; for this reason, neither can a corporeal representation be a species of a spiritual object, nor a created representation be a species of an uncreated object. If the representation is posited as uncreated, then the entity of the species will also be uncreated.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE RESOLVED.

The principal basis of the opposing view is that a sign formally signifies a thing that does not exist, as an ox’s footprint signifies an ox that no longer exists, and an image of an emperor signifies a dead emperor. Therefore, it is not formally a sign. For the inference from act to potency is valid: “It signifies; therefore it is a sign.” Yet it is not formally a relation, because there is no predicamental relation to a terminus that does not exist. Therefore, a sign does not formally consist in a relation.

It is confirmed that the formal account of sign is preserved by its being truly and formally something that leads a power to its signified thing. But leading a power to the signified thing does not occur through a relation, but through a proportion and connection between the sign and the signified thing, which is the foundation of a relation. Therefore, a sign does not formally consist in a relation but in the foundation of a relation. The major premise is clear from the definition of sign, “that which represents something to a cognitive power”; therefore it leads a power to the signified thing. The minor premise is proved as follows: for a sign to represent something to me, it is not necessary that I know its relation, just as a countryman recognizes an animal from a footprint without thinking about the relation; brute animals also use signs, as will be said below, and do not know the relation, but only the signified thing as it is known in the sign. Therefore, if the relation is not known, the relation does not lead, and thus it does not pertain to the formal account of sign.

THE REPLY IS first that this argument has no force for those who think the relation of a sign is always of reason, even in natural signs, because they think it is founded on their knowability. But granted that the relation of a natural sign is real, we reply that when an emperor has died, the sign does not remain formally, but virtually and fundamentally. A sign moves a power by reason of its foundation, not by reason of its relation, just as a father generates not by reason of the relation but by reason of his generative power, and yet he formally consists in a relation.

And to the proof: “It signifies formally, that is, it actually signifies; therefore it is formally a sign”—the consequence is plainly denied, because it suffices to be virtually a sign in order to signify actually. This is clearly illustrated by the following: B actually causes and produces an effect; therefore, it is actually a cause in reality. For the cause itself, though it does not exist in itself, causes through the power it has left behind and causes formally, because the effect is then formally produced. Thus, when a sign and signification exist virtually, the sign formally leads a power to the signified thing, and yet is not formally a sign, but virtually and fundamentally. For as long as the power to move the power remains—which occurs through a sign insofar as it is representative—even if the relation of substitution to the signified thing does not remain, it can perform the functions of a substitute without a relation, just as a slave or minister can perform the operations of his ministry even after the death of his master, to whom he is related and in which the account of slave and minister formally consists.

In reply to the confirmation, it is said that two things must be considered in the account of what leads: the power or account of exercising the very representation that leads, and the relation of subjection or substitution to that for which it exercises this power. Thus, in a master we consider the power to govern or coerce subjects and his relation to them; in a servant, the power to obey and the relation of subjection. As regards the power of leading representatively, we admit that it is not a relation according to being but the foundation of a relation, namely, the proportion and connection with the signified thing. But as regards the formality of sign—which is not just any proportion and representation, but is something that serves and substitutes for the signified thing—it formally consists in the relation of a representative substitute. For example, being a servant in place of a master is formally a relation, and yet the right to coerce and to obey are not relations according to being.

Second it is argued: A sign formally consists in being able to lead a power to the signified thing; for through this it has signification, which is the form of a sign, and through this the definition of sign belongs to it: that it represents something other than itself to a cognitive power. But it has the ability to lead to the signified thing, even as a means and instrument, through a transcendental relation. Therefore, a sign formally consists in that relation.

The minor premise is proved as follows: through this, a sign leads a power to the signified thing as a means by which it manifests the signified thing to the power. But it does this not by reason of a predicamental relation, but by a transcendental one, because once a transcendental relation of cause, effect, image, or any connection between two things is known, the terminus is immediately attained. Therefore, no predicamental relation is required for a sign to lead or be able to lead to the signified thing, since the transcendental relation performs this sufficiently. Nor is it valid to say that this transcendental relation is the foundation of the sign relation, because what is only such fundamentally cannot give the formal effect; a generative power, for example, cannot formally constitute a father, nor can a quality constitute something similar, although they are the foundations of these relations. Therefore, if the transcendental relation only grounds the sign relation, it does not formally provide the sign’s formal effect or its exercise.

It is further confirmed that it is unreasonable for conventional signs not to remain formally signs when they are not actually related to their signified thing, as with a closed book, in which the sign, or the letters written there, are not known; thus they do not then have a relation in act, and since this relation is of reason, it depends on actual cognition. Therefore, a sign cannot formally consist in a relation according to being. The antecedent is proved: a sign in a closed book retains its imposition, and therefore its signification, which can be reduced to act by opening the book. Therefore, it is formally and actually a sign, because it actually retains its signification.¹⁰

THE REPLY IS that this argument proves no more than the preceding one. Therefore, we say that the formal account of sign consists in being able to lead someone to cognition of the signified thing—not in any manner of power, but in a power subject to and substituting for the signified thing, inferior to it in the account of sign. Therefore, we consider in a sign both the power that moves a faculty and the order of a substitute to that for which it moves. The first is a transcendental relation, the second a predicamental relation. A sign consists in the second, not the first, because the first—namely, manifesting something else—also belongs to things that are not signs, as we said of light manifesting colors, an object representing itself, and God representing creatures. Therefore, for the cause to be known when the effect is seen, or the archetype when an image is seen, does not formally constitute the account of sign unless we add the special relation of a representative substitute, and so on; this signifies a relation according to being.

In reply to the refutation, it is said that the foundation of sign does not formally constitute the account of sign insofar as it is subjection and substitution, but insofar as it is the power to move, just as generative power constitutes the power of generation in a father, not the formal relation of father, which consists in being a principle that assimilates and has authority in relation to a son.

In reply to the confirmation, it is said that some hold different views in this matter about conventional signs, because all agree that the sign relation in them, if it exists, is not real but of reason.

Some think that a relation of reason not only denominates, but also exists through the existence of its foundation, at least imperfectly and incipiently, and thus denominates even before it is actually apprehended. But two difficulties remain to be explained by this reply. First, such existence will not denominate the thing perfectly and simply, but only incipiently and imperfectly; thus a sign in a closed book, or in a spoken word that is not actually apprehended, will not be a perfect sign, but only an incipient and imperfect one. It will acquire the perfect account of sign when it is actually apprehended. The same difficulty that drives us to this solution therefore remains: how can a sign in a closed book or a spoken word, not apprehended relatively, signify perfectly and lead to the signified thing? For the word man represents its signified thing no less perfectly if its relation is apprehended than if it is not apprehended; it retains its imposition and perfect signification in the same way. Therefore, it will be a perfect and complete sign, not merely an incipient one, before the relation, because it signifies and is a sign equally perfectly before that relation.¹¹ — The second difficulty is that this imperfect and incipient existence is either only fundamental and virtual with respect to the sign, or also actual. If it is only fundamental, this is to say that only the sign itself exists. If it is actual, it is very difficult to explain how a real existence, such as that of the foundation, prior to actual apprehension, makes something actually existent that is a being of reason and has only objective being. For then it will not be a purely being of reason, since it will also be capable of real existence, albeit imperfect and incipient.

Others think that it is formally a sign even before the formal existence of the sign relation. Others hold that it is considered a sign only in a moral way, because its imposition is said to remain in a moral way. But whether this is actually to be a sign or not is difficult. For “actually, morally” is a weakening particle, as if one said “actually, fundamentally” or “actually, virtually”; for the morality of this lasting imposition is the foundation of the relation.

Therefore, it must simply be said that the imposition or designation of something to be a sign of this or that thing is only the foundation of the sign relation, because it gives the sign a connection with that thing and substitutes it in place of that thing in signifying, not naturally but according to the choice of the one imposing it, just as abstraction of a nature is the foundation of universality. Hence, just as a natural sign exercises signification by reason of its foundation even if it does not actually have a relation to the signified thing, because the signified thing does not exist—as with an image of an emperor after his death—so too a spoken word or written mark signifies and represents even if its relation is not actually conceived and consequently does not exist through a concept. It does so by reason of an imposition made once, which does not formally return in the proximate way, as we shall say in the following question, art. 5. In these relations of reason there is no difficulty in an actual cognition of some form ceasing, and with it the formal existence of that form and the formal denomination arising from such existence, and then, when cognition is posited again, that form arising again, while the fundamental denomination always remains. This is like a universal that remains when comparison and relation are removed and only abstraction is posited: it remains universal metaphysically, not logically. Thus a conventional sign without a known relation remains a sign morally and fundamentally, and, as it were, metaphysically—that is, in the order of representing as an effect—but not formally and, as it were, logically, as regards the intention of the relation.

YOU WILL INSIST: This passive imposition of a sign leaves nothing real in it; therefore it cannot move a power or lead it to the signified thing, because a power cannot be moved by what is nothing. For a moving object actualizes and perfects a power, which this imposition cannot do. Therefore it does not remain a sign fundamentally, that is, as a power that moves and represents.

The reply is that all this also applies to the conventional sign itself when it exists actually and completely, for it is always something of reason. Therefore, we say that it moves by reason of the imposition, not as something immediately knowable and by reason of itself, but mediately and through something else, like other non-real beings; and so, once its borrowed knowability is presupposed, it takes on the account of what moves and represents, just as something knowable does.

Third it is argued: The genus of sign is the account of what represents and the account of an object that can be known—not the ultimate object, as the signified thing, but the intermediate one. But the account of what represents and of an object do not signify a relation according to being, but a transcendental relation. Indeed, the formality of being knowable as such is not formally a being but is presupposed as one, since it is a property of being and consequently is not a determinate being, namely a relation. Therefore, neither is a sign.

The consequence is clear, because if the genus is not in the account of what is relative, how can the species pertain to relation? We admit the minor premise. The major premise is clear from the definition of sign: it is representative of a cognitive power; therefore, representation and the account of object, or knowability, belong to it essentially. For it cannot otherwise lead to cognition of the signified thing except by presenting and representing itself to a power. But “representative” cannot be said essentially of sign as its species or specific difference, since it belongs to other things too; therefore it belongs to it as genus.

It is confirmed: a sign in general cannot consist in a relation; therefore, a sign absolutely is not a relation. The antecedent is proved as follows. First, a sign is common to a formal and an instrumental sign; but a formal sign is not a relation, but a quality, since it is a cognition or concept, as will be said below. Second, a sign is common to conventional and natural signs; but, on the view that the relation of a natural sign is real, there is no relation common to both except a relation abstracting from the real and the relation of reason. The relation of sign, however, is more determinate and contracted than one that abstracts from the real and the relation of reason. Therefore, a sign in general does not signify a relation according to being; for it would have to be placed determinately in one member, either real or of reason.

THE REPLY IS that what represents is not the genus of sign, but its foundation, just as what generates is not the genus of paternity but its foundation; nor is it what represents alone, for in that way it is related only remotely to what signifies as such, that is, to what substitutes for the signified thing and is subordinated to it in representing and leading to a power. It is placed in the definition of sign as a foundation pertaining to the relation, for the relation essentially depends on a foundation. If the relation is of some cause, effect, or exercise, the whole exercise is performed through the foundation; a relation has no exercise other than regarding something, if it is a relation according to being. Thus a father generates by reason of his foundation, a master commands by reason of his foundation, a minister substitutes and acts by reason of his foundation, and a sign represents by reason of its foundation. This is clear because the account of object or what can be represented in a sign is first with respect to itself: it presents itself to a power and, insofar as it is an object, directly regards the power as its measure. All this is not the genus of sign; for a sign principally regards the signified thing, to which it subordinates the very account of representing. Therefore, it begins to consist in the substitutive relation to the signified thing. What represents, however, insofar as it is connected substitutively to the signified thing, grounds that relation; and that connection is fundamentally substitution.

In reply to the confirmation, it is said that cognition and concepts have the account of quality insofar as they are acts or images of the object on which the relation of the formal sign is founded; the sign essentially consists in this relation insofar as cognition and concepts thus substitute for the object. Just as St. Thomas, in the places cited above, calls a character a sign fundamentally, since in itself it is a quality that nevertheless grounds the sign relation, so concepts and cognitions are informative qualities, not signifying objectively; but they ground the relation of a formal sign, that is, a sign whose representation and exercise of signifying occur by informing.

And to the other part of the argument it is said that sign in general signifies a relation more determinate than relation in general, whether it is transcendental or a relation according to being. For the argument applies on every view: how is sign in general a determinate being and inferior to being as such, and yet divided into real and of reason? For if the relation is transcendental, it will be real in a natural sign and of reason in a conventional sign. Therefore, this does not raise a special difficulty against our assertion that the relation of sign is according to being. It must be said that there is no problem in lower things taking on an analogical concept and being divided analogically like higher things, though more narrowly. Insofar as they subsist under an analogical concept, they are not placed under a determinate and univocal member of the higher division, but pertain analogically to both. A common example is the name “Wisdom.” It is a more determinate concept than being, yet it is not determinately created or uncreated; it can be divided into both because it can be taken analogically. But if univocal wisdom is taken, it will be determinately created or determinately uncreated. In the same way, “man,” if taken as abstracting from true and painted, living and dead, is something inferior to being, but not in a determinate member, because it is taken analogically, and consequently not as determinately one thing or as determinately in one member. Thus sign, as common to natural and conventional signs, is analogous, as with true and painted signs, real and of reason; and, as such, it is not in a determinate member of being or relation, but each of its inferiors in itself will be in a determinate genus.

To reach the point of difficulty, we must distinguish several relations that can converge in a sign. There is no doubt that some of them can be real in a natural sign; yet those relations are not the formal and quidditative character of sign itself. For since, according to its definition, a sign is said to be “that which represents something to a cognitive power,” a sign must, in order to represent something else, if it is a sign outside the power, have the character of an object cognizable in itself, so that once it is cognized the power may proceed through it to something else. But if it is a formal sign within the power, it must be a real and intentional representation—which in a thing is a certain quality—with a relation of likeness to that of which it is a representation, and an order to the power.

Likewise, there must be found in a sign some agreement, proportion, or connection with the thing signified, so that it is said to represent this rather than that. This proportion or agreement varies. At times it is that of an effect to a cause, or a cause to an effect, as smoke signifies fire as its effect, while a cloud or wind signifies rain as its cause. At times it is likeness, an image, or some other proportion; in signs by convention it is an imposition and assignment by the community. In a word: since a sign is related both to what is signified and to a power, there may precede the constitution of the character of sign certain relations or respects that make it apt in relation to the power or to what is signified. But the formal and quidditative character of sign does not consist in these, nor does its relation to the thing signified, although the Conimbricenses hold the opposite, In Periherm. I, q. 1, a. 2. For these relations can be separated from the character of sign and found without it. The character of an object is found without that of a sign; and the character of an effect, cause, likeness, or image can likewise be found without the character of a sign. Further, a relation to something as an effect or cause—which is founded on action—or as an image—which is founded on likeness through imitation, without an order to a power—has a different foundation and formal character from the relation of a sign. The latter is founded on the measured in relation to the measure, by way of a representative that substitutes for another in an order to a power, an order that the other relations do not regard.

WE ASK, THEREFORE whether that formal and most proper relation of a sign, which is found in addition to all these or arises from them, is a real relation in real or natural signs. We certainly acknowledge that the relation of an object to a power, which precedes in an instrumental sign, whether by way of moving or terminating, is not a real relation: an object, in its being, does not regard a power by a real relation; rather, the power regards the object, depends on it, and is specified by it. Even if the relation of an object to a power were real and the object regarded the power reciprocally, just as the power regards the object (which is plainly false, since the object is the measure and the power the measured), it would still not be the relation or character of a sign. For the character of an object formally and directly regards, or is regarded by, a power, so that the respect between them is immediate; but a sign directly regards what is signified and regards the power obliquely, since it regards what is signified as something to be manifested to the power.¹ The line and order of reference, then, are different in an object as object and in a sign as sign, although a sign must be supposed to be an object.²

I ANSWER, THEN, AND SAY: The relation of a natural sign to what it signifies, by which it is constituted as a sign, is real and not a relation of reason, considered in itself and by virtue of its foundation, provided that the term exists and the other conditions of a real relation are met.

This seems more in accord with the mind of St. Thomas. First, he teaches that the relation of the sign of character is founded on a quality added to the soul, which is a real foundation, as is clear in ST III, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3, and In IV Sent. d. 4, q. 1, a. 1.³ He is speaking of the proximate foundation, for he refutes those who said that this relation is immediately founded on the soul, and teaches that something else must intervene on which the relation of the character-sign is founded, namely, the quality of character. He is therefore speaking of the proximate foundation. And in ST I, q. 16, a. 6, he says that although health is not in urine and medicine, “there is nevertheless something in each by which the one produces health, while the other signifies it.” Therefore the relation of a natural sign is founded on something real, as is that of urine to health: namely, on something it has in itself by which it signifies, just as medicine has something by which it produces health.

THE FOUNDATION of the conclusion is drawn from the very nature and quiddity of a sign, which consists in its being something better known, through which something less known is represented and manifested, as St. Thomas rightly notes in De veritate, q. 9, a. 4, ad 5,⁴ and In IV Sent. d. 1, q. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad 5,⁵ q. 2. For something to be better known than another and make that other cognizable and representable, its knowability must be more apt than the other’s to move a power, and must be determined or disposed toward that particular thing signified, so as to move the power to it rather than to something else—whether this motion and representation takes place formally or objectively. But for something to be cognizable in itself cannot be something of reason; and for it to be more cognizable in relation to another and make that other represented is likewise something real in natural signs. Therefore the relation of a natural sign is real.

The minor has two parts: namely, that a thing is really cognizable in itself, and that in relation to another it also really makes that other represented and cognizable.

As to the first part, it is proved as follows: before every operation of the intellect, a thing is cognizable. For if it were made cognizable by an operation of the intellect, it would be cognizable through being cognized, and so it would not be cognizable before cognition—which is contradictory, since in us cognition is derived from what is cognizable. But if it were made cognizable by reason or cognition, cognition would precede knowability, and consequently would not be derived from it as from an object.

Nor is it an objection that the cognizable, or object, does not regard a power by a real relation but by a relation of reason, for this rather proves the reality of knowability itself. It regards a power by a relation of reason precisely because the power depends on the object, not the object on the power; the object stands as measure, while the power stands as measured. This belongs to relations of the third order, in which the measured depends and therefore really regards the measure, whereas the measure does not depend on the measured and so regards it only by reason. Yet this very fact argues for a greater reality in the character of measure: the less it depends, the greater its reality; and consequently there is less reality in the relation. Thus God’s being Lord relatively is something of reason, but in power it is something real. Likewise, a free act is really free in God, and all the more real because it is related to a free object by reason alone and does not really depend on it. So what is cognizable in real objects is something real absolutely and in itself, but something of reason relative to a power. That one object’s knowability is greater or more evident than another’s does not arise from the relation of reason to a power, which is found in every object, but from a greater force and efficacy in moving and manifesting, which is something real in itself.

The second part of the minor is shown as follows. Although what is cognizable in its order to a power is something of reason, it is nevertheless really cognizable in itself. Therefore, if it is to be not only cognizable in itself and with respect to itself, but also cognizable with respect to another, whose place it takes and for which it substitutes in knowability and presentation, a real relation intervenes. The consequence is clear, because this relation is founded on the real knowability of the sign itself and its real connection with this thing signified, so that it represents that thing—not on a connection with the power. Therefore it will be its substitute by a real relation and will regard it as what is signified, even though such knowability does not really regard a power. For the fact that smoke represents fire rather than water, an ox’s footprint an ox rather than a man, and the concept of a horse a horse rather than a stone, is founded on some real proportion and intrinsic connection of these signs with those things signified; and from a real proportion and connection with something a real relation arises. This is where some are especially liable to fall into error: without examining the matter, they see that the knowability or apprehensibility of a sign grounds the relation of sign, and that this apprehensibility is a relation of reason to a power, and conclude simply that the character of sign itself is a relation of reason. But they are quite mistaken. The relation of knowability to a power precedes and is presupposed by the character of sign, for it belongs to the common character of an object or of what is cognizable. For the character of sign further requires that the sign’s knowability be connected and coordinated with another thing, that is, with what is signified, so that it substitutes for it and is subordinated and serves it by conveying it to a power. Thus the relation of the sign’s knowability to the knowability of what is signified is a real relation in its own right, because it is founded on the proportion and greater connection that this knowability has with that one rather than another, enabling it to substitute and take its place. This is given on the side of the thing, and the act of representing to a power is also given on the side of the thing, even though the order and relation to the power is not real. For whether the relation of an object to a power is real is one question; whether its representation is real is another.

Hence St. Thomas says, De veritate, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2,⁶ “that two things are required for a species, which is a means: namely, the representation of the thing cognized, which belongs to it by reason of its nearness to what is cognizable, and spiritual being, which belongs to it according to the being it has in the one who cognizes.” I weigh these words: “representation, which belongs to it by reason of its nearness, etc.” Therefore representation in a natural sign is founded on its nearness to what is cognizable, for which it substitutes and in relation to which it is a means. But in things that are really proportioned and joined, this nearness is a real relation, since it has a real foundation.

FROM WHAT HAS BEEN SAID YOU WILL GATHER that in signs by convention the character of sign must also be explained through a relation to what is signified. But this relation is one of reason. A sign does not consist merely in the extrinsic denomination by which it is made or designated by the community to signify, as some recent authors think, supposing that without that fiction of the intellect it is denominated a sign solely by the imposition itself. This imposition is indeed required as the foundation of the relation and character of sign, because through it something is made apt and designated to be a sign, just as a natural sign grounds a relation to a particular thing signified by being proportioned and connected with it.

Accordingly, from that extrinsic denomination of designation and imposition there arises a twofold relation of reason. The first is common to every extrinsic denomination, insofar as it is conceived by the intellect in the manner of a form and a denominating relation, as being seen in relation to the one who sees, or being loved in relation to the one who loves. The other is a particular relation by which one designation is distinguished from another. For the community can designate and assign someone to various offices, which are distinguished only by their relations to the things they are appointed to do: someone is designated and appointed to be a judge, governor, or teacher, and certain things to be the signs or insignia of these offices; likewise, words are designated to serve human communication. These offices arise from a distinction made by the community, which is an extrinsic denomination. They are distinguished, however, because a judge is ordered to judge such subjects, a governor to govern, a teacher to teach, and so on. These distinctions are taken from the order to their functions or objects, with respect to which they are exercised, and are explained only through relations; therefore they are distinguished by relations to their functions and objects. The same must therefore be said of signs by convention, although they are founded on the extrinsic denomination of imposition. When the relation ceases, these things are said to remain fundamentally, insofar as that designation by the community is said to remain morally or virtually.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

FROM TWO SIDES arguments can be made to prove that a natural sign is a relation of reason: from the side on which the sign regards a power, or from the side on which it regards what is signified.

From the side on which it regards a power, the argument is common but difficult: A sign regards a power by a relation of reason. But this relation is intrinsic and essential to it, indeed more principal. Therefore a natural sign does not consist precisely in a real relation.

The major is certain, because the order between a sign and a power is found to be of the same line and character as that between an object and a power. For a sign is a kind of object, or a substitute for an object, and so it moves a power objectively, not effectively; consequently it regards a power in the same order as an object. But it is clear that an object regards a power by a relation of reason, because there is no mutual relation between the power and the object. Therefore the relation is not real on the side of the other extreme—not on the side of the power, since the power really regards the object—and so it will be a relation of reason on the side of the object. In particular, an instrumental sign cannot manifest anything to a power except insofar as it is cognized; but being cognized is something of reason. Therefore an instrumental sign leads to what is signified by means of something of reason, namely, by means of being cognized.

The minor is proved: First, because a sign is an instrument that a power uses to arrive at what is signified. Second, because the end to which a sign is ordered is the manifestation of what is signified to that very power. Therefore the power itself, or its cognition to which the sign leads, is the end principally intended by the sign; consequently, an order to the power is intrinsic and essential to it.

This is confirmed because formal and instrumental signs differ in their character as signs, as we shall say in the following question; and they do not differ in their order to what is signified, but in their order to a power. For smoke as an instrumental sign and the concept of fire regard the same thing signified, namely fire; but smoke does so instrumentally and the concept formally. Therefore they differ in their different orders to a power; and thus this order is essential to a sign, insofar as a formal sign regards a power as a form of cognition, and an instrumental sign as an extrinsic mover.

THE RESPONSE IS that whether the order to what is signified and to a power in a sign is only one or is twofold, a matter to be treated in the following article, nevertheless, insofar as it is a sign and under this formal character, it does not regard a power directly and principally, or as its measure. Rather, it regards the power obliquely, as a way and means by which the power is led to what is its object and can be manifested to it, namely, what is signified. Hence the power, rather than the sign, regards what is signified as an object that can be manifested, by which both are specified and measured: the power as a cognitive capacity knowing and tending toward it, and the sign as the way and means through which one tends toward it. That the sign is also an object and first cognized, so that through it the power may tend toward what is signified, is not what essentially constitutes a sign as a sign. For a formal sign manifests to the power without being an object cognized by it; rather, it is a form that makes the power cognitive. What therefore belongs per se to the character of a sign is that it substitutes for an object in representing that object to a power. This substitution implies a real subordination and relation to what is signified as the principal object, and is the essential relation that formally constitutes the sign, although it also reaches the power obliquely, insofar as it regards what is signified as something manifestable to the power.

Therefore, the argument in its formal shape is answered: A sign regards a power by a relation of reason. I distinguish: formally, insofar as it is a sign, by a direct relation of measure to measured, I deny; presuppositively, and insofar as it is an object of some kind, I concede.

In answer to the proof, it is said that a sign is in the line and order of an object principally, per se, and as a measure—I deny; as a substitute and stand-in for an object, I concede. Hence it does not regard a power in the same way as an object does: it directly regards the object that can be manifested, and the power obliquely, just as a habit, which is in the powers, directly regards the object by which it is specified, although it does so in order to assist the power in relation to that object. Nor is an instrumental sign founded on being cognized as regards its character as a sign; being cognized is required for the exercise of signifying itself, not so that the sign may be constituted as a sign that regards an object as its substitute. It has this character before being cognized, because a sign does not consist in actual representation but in the capacity to represent.

In answer to the first proof of the minor, a sign is called an instrument of a power in the way that it is an instrument of what is signified and its substitute for manifesting that thing to the power. A sign is not an instrument of a power on the side of eliciting an act, as though the power elicited an act by means of the sign; it is an instrument on the side of representing the object, insofar as the object is manifested through the sign. Thus it is subordinated principally to the object, as that for which it substitutes in representing it to the power.

In answer to the second proof, the end of a sign is to manifest what is signified to a power, but through subordination to what is signified itself as the principal thing, for which the sign is deputed and substituted in representing it. What, through subordination to another and substitution for it, regards some end, regards more principally that for which it substitutes and for which it is deputed than that toward which it moves, or the end toward which it tends. For it regards the latter as an end produced, but that for which it substitutes as the end for whose sake it acts; through its subordination to that, it regards such an effect.

In answer to the confirmation, the division of signs into formal and instrumental, if it is essential (a question for the following question), is not taken solely from the order to a power, but from the different order to what is signified. For the different way of affecting a power—as an object first cognized or as a concept intrinsically informing it—is reduced to a different character of manifesting and representing what is signified, because manifestation and representation themselves are a kind of motion. Thus the way of affecting a power, which varies the motion, is reduced to a variety of representation. But a different representation regards what is signified under a different formal character, or formal account, of what can be represented, because representation and what is representable must be proportioned to one another; when one varies, the other varies too. The sign itself is thus made formally diverse by reason of what is signified and what is representable, although materially it is the same.

A SECOND ARGUMENT is made to prove that even on the side of what is signified, and in the order to it, the relation is not real. First, when what is signified does not exist, the sign is nevertheless no less formally a sign in relation to it, because it actually represents it to the power; then the relation to what is signified, which does not exist, is not real. Second, when the sign represents some being of reason, such as the concept of a chimera or its external likeness and image. Third, the relation of a sign differs from the relation of an image only in this: a sign touches what is signified as something to be represented to a power, whereas an image regards its exemplar as something to be imitated by it. But in what is signified, being representable to a power is not something real but something of reason, because what is signified is not ordered to a cognitive power by a real order and relation, but as something manifestable; so too are other objects, which do not regard a power by a mutual relation. Therefore what is signified is reached by the sign under a certain character of reason, and so not through a real relation. Finally, the very exercise of signifying or representing posits nothing real in what is signified. For no change occurs in what is signified by being represented by a sign, whereas a real change occurs in the power when it is newly moved by the sign. Therefore the relation of a sign to what is signified is not real, since the capacity to signify cannot be more real than its act and exercise.

THE RESPONSE to the first proof is that, when what is signified does not exist, the sign does not remain formally a sign, but it remains fundamentally so, because the formal and actual character of substitution is lacking when that for which it substitutes does not exist. But the power to manifest both itself and what is signified as absent in this way remains, because its proportion or connection with that thing remains and can ground such a relation. Representation takes place by virtue of this power, not by virtue of the relation by which the sign is formally constituted as a substitute.

To the second proof it is said that a concept of a being of reason or an image of a chimerical thing represents an impossible thing after the manner of possible things. Thus a chimera is represented through its parts, which are something real—for example, a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail—even though their combination is not real. But with respect to what is purely chimerical in such an object and is a being of reason, there is no real relation of a natural sign; there can instead be something real that manifests and represents, namely, a species that represents a being of reason after the likeness of a real being. This manifestation, however, neither requires a real relation nor expresses the formal character of a sign, but the transcendental character of a representative.

In answer to the third proof, what is signified, as an object that can be manifested to a power, is something real in itself, although it is not related by a mutual relation either to the power to which it can be represented or to the sign through which it can be represented. Indeed, because in its order it depends less on the power than the power depends on it, it does not, as an object, have a mutual relation to the power. Thus just as science and a power themselves regard an object by a real relation of the third kind, although the object is not related to the power by a real relation—because the reality of the term in the being of the thing and in the formal character of a term suffices for this, as was said in q. 17, a. 5—so too the relation of a sign to the same object as something signifiable to a power is real. For in the being of the thing, what is signified is real, even though the relation of what is signified to the power or to the sign itself is not real.

In answer to the final proof, the exercise of a sign posits nothing in what is signified, since the sign rather receives and depends on what is signified, as one that substitutes for it. If it really changed what is signified, it would really regard the sign by which it was changed. Hence from the fact that it does not really change what is signified, it does not follow that the sign does not really regard what is signified, but that what is signified does not really regard the sign—which we readily concede. But it was necessary to prove that the sign is not really changed by, or dependent on, what is signified, for which it substitutes. In relation to a power, a sign does indeed move it really and objectively, not by acting effectively, as will be said below.⁷ But such motion belongs to the sign not formally as a sign, but as an object. To move by substituting for another is an act of the sign, or signifying; but in this way it implies the relation of a substitute to what is signified. Therefore, insofar as it is a sign, it does not directly regard the power, but what is signified, for which it substitutes in order to move the power.

A THIRD ARGUMENT: A natural sign and a sign by convention agree univocally in the character of sign. Therefore one cannot be real and the other a relation of reason, since nothing is univocal to a real relation and a relation of reason; nor are both something real, since a sign by convention is plainly something of reason. Therefore both are something of reason.

The antecedent is proved as follows: The character of an object, or of what is cognizable, is univocal in real beings and beings of reason, because it belongs to univocal sciences and to the same power. For Logic, which treats of beings of reason, and Metaphysics, which treats of real beings, are sciences in a univocal sense. Therefore their objects too are univocally objects and knowable things. Likewise, then, signs are univocal, since the character of sign and of what is signifiable belongs to the class of object and of what is cognizable, for which the sign substitutes.

This is confirmed by the familiar argument that sign in general is a determinate species of being or of relation; therefore it must be placed in a determinate genus and cannot abstract from what is real and what is of reason. Indeed, even within relation it is not apparent in which genus it is to be placed determinately. For it is not always placed in the genus of measure and measured, since sometimes a sign is not perfected by what is signified, but conversely—as when a cause is a sign of its effect, for example, a cloud is a sign of rain. Nor is it easy to see, among signs that are effects, how smoke is measured by fire, or how two relations of measure are distinguished in an image, one under the character of image and the other under the character of sign, since they are different.

THE RESPONSE is that it is true that the character of what is cognizable and of an object can be univocal in real beings and beings of reason. For there are divisions of being according to the being of the thing, and other divisions according to the genus of what can be known, as Cajetan rightly teaches, ST I, q. 1, a. 3. Thus the character of what is cognizable is not formally the character of being, but is being only presuppositionally and is consequent upon being. For truth is a property of being and thus is not formally being, but is consequent upon being and presupposes being; what is true is the same as what is cognizable. Hence it is entirely possible for something incapable of existence to be capable of truth, not as a subject but as an object: it does not have in itself an entity that, as a subject, grounds truth and knowability, but it can be cognized as an object after the likeness of a real being, and thus be objectively in the intellect as something true. Therefore, although real being and being of reason are analogical in entity, insofar as one is represented after the likeness of the other they can agree univocally in the character of object, even things that are not univocal in entity, such as God and creature, substance and accident, in the character of what is knowable by metaphysics or intelligible to the intellect. But since the character of sign does not consist in the character of object absolutely, but in substitution for another, which is supposed to be an object or what is signified, so that it may be represented to a power, it does not belong to the genus of what is cognizable absolutely, but relatively and ministerially. In this respect it takes on something of the order of entity—namely, insofar as it is a relation and draws the genus of what is cognizable into the genus of relation. In this respect the relation of a natural sign, which is real, does not agree univocally with the relation of a sign by convention, which is a relation of reason.

The response to the confirmation was given near the end of the preceding article. As for the further point about the species in which the sign is placed in the genus of relation, the answer is that it belongs to the genus of measure and measured. What is signified always stands as the principal thing to be represented, and the sign as serving and ministering in this genus; thus it regards its principal as an extrinsic measure in the genus of what is representable, and the sign is perfected all the more by its approach to that measure, the better it represents. Thus smoke regards fire as a measure in the character of what is representable, not in the genus of being. An image, as an image, regards its exemplar as a measure in imitation and derivation from it as a principle from which it is derived; but in the character of sign it regards it as a measure in the genus of what is representable and manifestable to a power. These are different relations. As for the relation of cause or effect, whether efficient or formal, found in signs with respect to what they signify, such relations are not formally the relation of sign itself, but something presupposed or concomitant, making this sign proportionate to that thing signified rather than another. The proper relation of sign is to what is signified as representable to a power, not as an effect or cause.

It is certain that external signs, which are known beforehand in order to lead to the signified, an order to the power is found, as in the other objects of cognition that terminate cognition. Such signs are clearly known as objects: smoke is first seen as an object, then from knowledge of itself leads to the signified. Hence the relation or order of the sign to the power in the character of an object must be distinct from the order or relation in the character of a sign, since in this respect of an object it agrees with the other objects that are not signs, and, like them, regards the power objectively. Therefore, for it to regard the power not only purely objectively but also significatively, it remains to inquire whether the very same relation by which it regards what is signified, and in the order to which it takes on the character of a sign, also regards the power to which this signified thing is to be manifested by the sign; or whether it has a relation to the signified purified of, and absolute from, any respect to the power, while by another relation it regards the power in the character of an object, and both relations concur to constitute the character of a sign; or whether, even within the very character of a sign, apart from its character as an object, there is a double relation, one to the power and the other to what is signified.

AND A DIFFICULTY ARISES, because on the one hand a sign regards what is signified not only in itself, but in order to the power, since the order to the power is included in the definition of a sign—namely, that it be manifestative to the power, etc. If, then, the character of a sign expresses this relation to the power, either it regards both by one and the same relation, and the difficulties discussed below follow, since these are altogether diverse terms: with respect to the power, it is only a relation of reason; with respect to what is signified, it is an order of the measured to the measure; whereas, with respect to the power, the power is measurable by the sign itself as by a known object. Or the sign’s relation to the power is distinct from its relation to what is signified; and thus the sign will not belong to the category of relation, because the character of a sign involves not one relation but a plurality of relations.

NEVERTHELESS, LET THE CONCLUSION BE: If the power and what is signified are considered as terms directly reached by the relation, they necessarily require a double relation in the sign. But in this way the sign regards the power directly as an object, not formally as a sign. If, however, the power is considered as a term reached obliquely, then by one relation of the sign both what is signified and the power are reached; and this is the proper and formal character of a sign.

Thus one and the same relation can terminate at two terms, one in the direct case, the other in the oblique, which is simply to have only one term in the formal character of a term.

Several of the more recent authors do not agree with this conclusion. Some think that a sign consists in a double relation concurring on equal terms, one to what is signified, the other to the power. Others recognize in the sign, too, insofar as it is distinguished from an object, a double relation—to what is signified and to the power—although not contributing equally to constitute the character of a sign, yet intrinsically and essentially required. They explain with great difficulty how one of these relations is compared with the other: whether as genus or difference, as attribute or mode. Others fashion from the power and what is signified one integral formal term composed of material parts. Others deny that a sign as sign regards the power, and others that it regards what is signified; instead, they hold that the whole essence of a sign consists in a certain apprehensibility by the power, as a means for knowing something else. Although these latter opinions are commonly rejected, since the definition of a sign requires both what is signified, which is to be manifested, and the power to which it is to be represented, some nevertheless concede that only this belongs to the intrinsic character of a sign: that it can terminate the power as a means through which or in which what is signified is known. They do not hold it to belong to its intrinsic character to be related to the power, whether by a real or transcendental order or by a relation of reason, although, given our way of conceiving, it cannot be apprehended without such an order.

The conclusion is proved.

AS FOR THE FIRST PART, that the power and what is signified, as terms directly reached, require a double relation is clear from this,¹ because the power is directly regarded only by its object, as mover or terminator. The power regards an object as object, whereas a sign directly expresses what stands in place of an object and serves as a means between the signified and the power. As sign, then, it directly regards what it stands for. To regard the power directly, it must be taken as object, not as sign; it then reaches the power by a relation other than that of sign, and thus has several relations. In sum: the relation to the power in the direct case, as directly bearing on the power, and the relation of a sign proceed in opposite ways. The power is movable by the sign, for it is moved by it as something representing what is signified; but the signified is not moved by the sign, but is manifestable, or that for which the sign performs its office in representation. Therefore, if these relations are taken in the direct case, they regard terms that are distinct even formally in their character as terms.

It cannot be said that a sign is related to what is signified and not to the power, but merely terminates the power. For it is incompatible with understanding a sign as related to what is signified that it be detached from the power and conceived without any order to it, since it regards what is signified precisely insofar as it carries and presents it to the power. Therefore, this relation to what is signified as something to be manifested to the power is incompatible with being detached from the power. But if, with respect to the power, it does not stand absolutely, but dependently and in an ordered relation to it, then consequently it has a relation to it.

This is confirmed: although an object is not constituted per se by its relation to the power, which instead depends on it, a sign, which stands in place of an object in representing and presenting itself to power, necessarily² includes this relation, because substitution is always for an end, and the sign, substituting for the signified in representing it to power, must be ordered to power. To represent is to make an object present to power; therefore, a sign as means and substitute for the signified must be ordered to that to which it represents or makes it present.

THE SECOND PART of the conclusion is proved as follows: the relation of a sign to what is signified is a relation by way of representing it or applying it to the power. Therefore it must regard what is signified as the direct term and the that which of its relation, while also reaching the power obliquely and as the term to which. For it is incompatible with these relations, which function by way of substituting and representing, that they regard that for which they stand and not that for whose sake, or in order to which, they substitute. For something that substitutes or performs the office of another does so according to some definite character and in order to some definite end; otherwise that substitution would not be determinate, since it is determined by the end for which it is made. Therefore, if the relation of a representative and substitute standing in for a person is determinate, it must regard that person in such a way that it also reaches that for whose sake and in order to which it substitutes, for it is from this that the substitution is determinate. And so, since a sign performs the office of what is signified, represents it, and substitutes for it in a determinate way so as to make an object present to the power, some relation to the power is necessarily involved in the very core and innermost character of this substitution and representation of what is signified, insofar as it is determinate: for it substitutes in order to represent to the power.

How, then, is the same relation said to attain the signified thing directly and the power obliquely? Omitting the many and varied explanations, this explanation seems more adequate: the sign regards the power obliquely, insofar as being manifestable to the power is included in the signified thing itself. And so, since the signified thing is not regarded as something absolute in itself or according to another order, but as manifestable to the power, that relation necessarily touches the power obliquely which attains the signified thing, not stopping at it precisely as it is in itself, but as manifestable to the power. In this way it somehow attains the power under the aspect of being manifestable to something else—not by attaining the power separately, but by attaining what is manifestable to the power. Thus religion regards worship as its formal object insofar as it is to be offered to God: it does not regard God directly, for then it would be a theological virtue, but worship directly and God obliquely, insofar as God is contained in worship as the term to whom it is offered; religion regards worship as subject to that term, not absolutely or under another consideration. The same holds for friendship’s order toward the good that I will for my friend. For that order does not terminate at the good willed absolutely, but insofar as it is referable to the friend; and the friend, as the term of that good, in some way terminates the same relation, though not as a direct object, but as included in the direct object, since the good is regarded as belonging to the friend and not absolutely.

It is indeed true that, for the sign to regard the signified thing in this way, that is, as manifestable to the power, it is essentially presupposed that the sign itself regards the power by another relation: either as an apprehensible object, if it is an instrumental sign, or as a form constituting apprehension, if it is a formal sign. In this way it serves to attain knowledge of something else, as an instrumental or formal sign. Moreover, this relation of the sign to the power, as we said at the beginning of the article, does not belong to the sign formally as sign, but as object or form. It is, however, presupposed as required for the sign, because the sign is also an object that moves the power; unless it moves as an object, it will not manifest as sign. Formally, however, one relation is distinct from the other. And although, by the force of its sole relation to the signified thing—in which the power to which it is manifestable is included obliquely—it does not exercise representation unless the power is also moved insofar as it is a motive object, nevertheless from that relation to the signified thing it has the property that this motion is significant: that is, vicarious and substituting for another, which it signifies, rather than primary on its own account.

From this it follows that the sign’s apprehensibility is not itself the formal ground of the sign’s relation immediately and formally, since being apprehensible or knowable is the aspect of an object as object, which is required only presuppositionally for the notion of sign. Rather, its foundation is the very aspect of a medium that it has in relation to the signified as manifestable to the power, substituting for it in the role of moving and representing. Still less does being known or apprehended in the sign—which some call proximate apprehensibility—ground or complete the notion of sign, because being known does not belong to the notion of sign but to its exercise (for when it actually represents, it is actually known), not to its being representative.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE RESOLVED.

First it is argued: The relation of a sign to the signified thing in natural signs is real, whereas in those same signs the relation to the power is one of reason; therefore, it cannot be one and the same relation.

The antecedent is established as to the first part by the preceding article. The second part is proved as follows: the relation to the power is the sign’s relation insofar as it is apprehensible by the power. But the relation of what is apprehensible or knowable to the knowing power is a relation of reason, even if it is apprehensible as a sign, because being apprehensible or apprehended, whether in a sign or in an object, posits nothing real in it. For cognition or apprehension is real only in the power; in the apprehended thing, whatever it may be, it posits no reality.

The same argument is made from the different mode and species of the relation to the power and to the signified thing. For the relation of a sign to the signified thing is that of the measured to the measure, because the signified thing is primary, and the sign substitutes for it and acts in its place, as has often been said. The sign’s relation to the power, however, is conversely that of measure to measured. For the sign regards the power by a non-mutual relation, since the sign is on the side of the representing object and is not measured by the power; and therefore measures the power. For the power does not measure the apprehended thing but is measured by it, since it is perfected by it.

IT IS ANSWERED that these arguments and similar ones, which can be multiplied in the same way, prove what we said at the outset: namely, that the relation on the sign’s part to the power, insofar as the sign is its object, and to the signified thing as direct terms, is not one relation but several. Neither, however, is formally the relation of the sign as sign. The relation directly regarding the power is the relation of an object under the aspect and formality of object; the relation directly regarding the signified thing, by contrast, is under the aspect of a cause or effect, or of some similar relation. Hence the thing that is a sign is determined as something of the signified thing, and thus to represent that rather than something else.

Strictly speaking, however, the relation of the sign itself, considered most formally as sign, regards the power obliquely—not insofar as the sign is apprehensible by the power and is its object, but insofar as the signified thing itself is manifestable to the power. By attaining what is naturally suited to stand for it, or by substituting for it, not absolutely but as it is manifestable to the power, the power is there involved virtually and obliquely. Therefore, although the relation of an object or of what is apprehensible to the power, taken directly and in the manner of an object, is a relation of reason, nevertheless the relation to the signified thing can be real even as that thing is manifestable to the power. For in an object, being signifiable and representable to the power is something real, although it does not really regard the power. It is one thing how an object regards the power, and another what it means in an object to be manifestable to the power. Being manifestable and objectifiable is something real, and it is that on which the power depends and by which it is specified; indeed, because it is so real, it does not depend on the power by a real relation. Therefore, since under the formality of sign the sign does not regard the power directly—for this belongs to the formality of object—but regards the thing signifiable or manifestable to the power, the power, as included obliquely in that manifestable object, is attained by the sign’s real relation. For the power is not regarded separately, but as included in what is real in the object insofar as it is manifestable to the power; here, everything actually and formally attained is real, and only the power, whose object it is, enters as a connoted and oblique term. Thus a science that treats of colors as objects of sight really regards colors, since they specify it, even though they virtually include an order to the power whose objects they are; the science’s relation to those objects is not a relation of reason. The relation by which a sign directly regards the power, moving it both to know itself and to know the signified thing in whose place it stands, is indeed a relation of reason, but distinct from the sign’s relation by which it regards the signified thing, because it is the relation of an object, not formally of a sign as sign.

This makes clear the answer to the second argument: it concerns the relation by which a sign directly and formally regards the power, which is the relation of a measure, or of a measuring object; it does not concern the relation by which it regards the signified thing as an object manifestable to the power, where the power is attained only obliquely and virtually, not by a relation of reason. Thus the sign is not a measure of the power, but an instrument of the signified thing directed to the power.

Second, an argument is made: These terms, namely, the signified and the power, are distinct even in the formal character of a term, since one is a term as that which is directly attained, while the other is a term as that to which; therefore they are distinct in more than a merely material way. For when a sign has several inadequate signifieds, it is related to them as to several terms materially diverse; therefore the power and the signified are distinguished in the character of terms by more than matter.

It is confirmed, because signs are specifically distinguished by their order to a power, as is clear in the formal and instrumental sign, which differ in species within the genus of sign and are not distinguished on the side of what is signified. For they can represent the same concept—for example, fire and smoke, which is a sign of fire—but they are distinguished by their way of relating to the power, by informing it or being set before it. Therefore, in a sign the order to the power is in the direct case and not in the oblique, since it specifies and distinguishes it.

This argument can also be made conversely, because a sign can be divided into different species according to its order to the signified while its order to the power remains unchanged; therefore the sign has distinct relations, since otherwise, if one varied, the other would vary too. The antecedent is evident: for different concepts vary on account of the different objects represented, while the relation to the power remains of the same character in all of them.

A second confirmation: The character of sign and the character of image differ in this respect: an image does not regard the power to which it represents, but rather the exemplar or idea of which it is an imitation. If it represents anything to a power, this is accidental to its being an image. A sign, however, per se regards the power, as that to which it represents. Therefore, the relation to the power is intrinsic to a sign and constitutive of its notion, since it essentially distinguishes a sign from an image.

Finally, a third confirmation: the relation to the power remains in the sign when the relation to the signified is destroyed, as is clear when the signified does not exist, yet the sign leads the power to knowledge of it just as before. Therefore it regards the power as something that leads and signifies just as before, and thus the relation to the power remains.

THE RESPONSE to the principal argument is that the signified, which is represented, and the power, to which the representation is made, are not two adequate terms distinct as terms, but together constitute one term, composed of a direct and an oblique element. Thus, in religion, the worship that is offered and God to whom it is offered are not two adequate terms, but one integral term of religion. Likewise, believing God and believing in God are not two terms, but one term of faith, insofar as one term is attained in such a way that it does not terminate absolutely and in itself, but as modified and related, or connoted, to something else—as the signified is attained as representable to a power.

The response to the first confirmation is that the division of sign into formal and instrumental is a division into different species. These are not taken directly from the mere difference in their relation to the power, but from a different relation to the signified as representable to the power in different ways. For one and the same object that is representable can be represented by a twofold representational medium, namely, a medium in which and a medium through which. The first grounds formal representation within the power, informing it; the second grounds instrumental representation outside the power, moving it. Hence, in the signified itself, insofar as it is representable, there is found a different notion or basis for terminating these different representations, or modes of representing, in signs, even though the thing represented is materially the same.

Similarly, the signs themselves presuppose a different manner of moving and representing to the power, namely, as an external object or as an internal form. This, however, pertains to the character of sign only presuppositionally; its most formal notion is that of a substitute for the signified, representable in this or that way.

From this the response to the other part of the argument is clear: although the order to the power is of the same character in different signifieds, it does not follow that it must be attained by a distinct relation. For relations of sign can indeed vary in species because of the diversity of the object representable, even though they agree, or do not differ, on the side of the connotation included obliquely. Thus faith and opinion agree in their mode of obscurity, but not in the formal character that specifies them.

The response to the second confirmation is that a sign regards the signified precisely as representable to a power, serving as its substitute and consequently being inferior to it; an image, however, regards its exemplar as imitable and as the principle from which it originates and is expressed, and thus it can be equal to it. Therefore, on the side of the term itself that they directly regard, they have distinct formal characters, or formal reasons for terminating, even though in one case an order to the power follows obliquely within the signified that it attains, and in the other it does not. Thus, the formal notion that distinguishes them in each case is the character of the signified as such, or of the exemplar as such, not the power itself to which the representation is made.

The response to the third confirmation is that when the order to the signified is destroyed, the order to the power is destroyed as well, since it was included in the signified obliquely and connotatively. Nevertheless, because this order remains fundamentally and virtually in the sign toward the signified that does not exist, the order to the power that accompanies the signified also remains fundamentally. Formally, however, the sign can retain within itself the character of an object that moves, or of a form that represents; this is a relation other than that of sign, as was said.

The definitions of these objects that we gave in Book I of the Summulae¹ are to be presupposed. With these presupposed, we speak of the dependence of a thing on something extrinsic in its specification.

LET THE FIRST CONCLUSION BE: An object in general, insofar as it abstracts from a motivating and a terminating object, consists in being something extrinsic from which the intrinsic character and species of a power or act is taken and on which it depends. This is reduced to the genus of an extrinsic formal cause that does not cause existence, but specification.

For the conclusion to be understood, note from Cajetan, Prima Pars, q. 77, a. 3, that some things are wholly absolute, depending on nothing extrinsic for their specification and constitution, such as substance, quantity, etc. Others are wholly relative: they have their entire being toward something else and depend on it as a pure term. Others are intermediate between these: they have a quiddity and absolute essence in themselves, so that they have something besides regarding and being related; nevertheless, in their constitution and specification they depend on something extrinsic, not in order to regard it, but in order to act, cause, or perform some operation. Powers, acts, and habits stand in this way in relation to the things they reach, and are said to have a transcendental order to them.

Note carefully that it is one thing for a thing to be wholly absolute from something extrinsic in its specification, and another for it to be absolute from it in its existence. In existing, no thing is absolute from something extrinsic except God alone, who is from himself; everything else is from God. Here, however, we are speaking of the dependence of a thing on something extrinsic in its specification, and in this way an object stands in relation to a power. An object is not related to a power or act as an efficient cause or as something that influences its existence; that belongs not to the object but to what produces it. But the specification of an act or power depends on an object in itself, even when existence is set aside.

Finally, an object differs from an idea or exemplary cause, even if it is an extrinsic formal cause. First, an idea is that after whose likeness the thing ideated is made; an object, however, is not that after whose likeness a power or its act is disposed. Second, an idea expresses an exemplary cause by way of origin, whereas an object is not a principle of origin with respect to a power or act. Finally, an idea is an effective exemplary cause and, in this respect, also causes existence: for it contributes to forming a thing in act and in an individual, and thus belongs to the practical intellect, which extends to a work and to the existence of an effect. An object, however, does not move with respect to exercise or efficiency, but only with respect to form and specification.

THUS THE CONCLUSION JUST STATED IS TAKEN FROM ST. THOMAS, Prima Secundae, q. 9, a. 1, who says that “an act is specified according to the account of its object,” and that “the object moves by determining in the manner of a formal principle, from which action in natural things receives its specification.”

And in Prima Pars, q. 77, a. 3, he says that “the object is compared to a passive power as a principle and moving cause,” and “to an act of an active power as a term and end.” “From these two,” he says, “an action receives its species, namely, from a principle or an end or term.” St. Thomas therefore holds that the object of a passive and an active power agree in specifying the act. Finally, in De Anima II, lect. 6, near the end,² he says: “It is clear that every object is compared to an operation of the soul either as something active or as an end; but from each of these the operation is specified.” Here the word every expresses the universal account of object.

THE REASON FOR THIS IS that although active and passive powers are founded on accounts as diverse as act and potency—since one is for acting and the other for receiving, as St. Thomas teaches very well in Prima Pars, q. 25, a. 1—the object of each agrees in determining or perfecting the power or its act extrinsically. It is clear that, with respect to a passive power, the object stands as something that perfects it extrinsically, since it reduces the power from potency to act; for it is compared to that power as the principle of its act, which belongs to actuality and perfection. It is compared to an active power as a term and end. Although what is a pure term does not perfect, as in the case of relatives, because a relation does not tend by acting but purely by regarding, and similarly what is a pure effect does not perfect but is purely perfected, as creatures are with respect to God—since they are so produced by God that his action does not depend in itself on their being terminated—nevertheless, in created acts, termination gives perfection to the acts. If they are not terminated, they are not perfect or complete, but are as though on the way and tending; they are therefore perfected by the very determination toward which they tend. Thus St. Thomas says in De potentia, q. 7, a. 10,³ that in the effect or passion itself a certain good and perfection of the mover is considered, as in univocal agents, which perpetuate the being of their species through their effects, and in other things that, when moved, move, act, or cause. “For by their own motion they are ordered to producing effects. And the same holds in all things in which some good of a cause arises from an effect.” So St. Thomas. From this teaching it is clear how a terminating object can perfect a power or action.

SECOND CONCLUSION: A true account of object is preserved in a motivating object, even insofar as it is distinguished from a terminating object.

This is against some who think that the account of object is preserved only in a terminating object, but exclude a motivating object from the account of object because it implies efficiency; yet it does not belong to an object as object to cause efficiently, but to specify.

However, a great equivocation is committed by applying the term “motivating” only to an efficient cause, since it is applied to other causes as well: an end is said to move, a proposed object moves the will, and an exemplar moves toward its imitation. We therefore distinguish a motivating object by way of exercise and by way of specification: the first belongs to an efficient cause, the second to a formal object. This is clear from the passages of St. Thomas cited in the preceding conclusion. There St. Thomas plainly teaches that a motivating object specifies a passive power and is compared to it as a moving principle; thus it is prior to what it specifies in the order of definition. Therefore, as motivating, it has the true account of an object and not of an efficient cause. For insofar as an efficient cause is efficient, it regards the being of the thing it produces, not its specification or the principles of its definition. Yet St. Thomas specifically says in the cited passage of De Anima II, lect. 6,⁴ “that objects are prior to operations of the soul in the order of definition”; and he had spoken of terminating objects as well as active or motivating ones. The account of a motivating object therefore does not express efficiency in the object, but remains within the limits of an objective form, that is, a specifying form.

Finally, this is confirmed because a passive power, as such, can be specified by something extrinsic, since by its species it is ordered to that thing; consequently, its species is not wholly absolute in itself and independent of everything extrinsic. But whatever is not wholly absolute in itself, but is by its species orderable to something else, can be specified by it. A passive power as such, however, is not compared to an extrinsic specifying thing as to a term, but as to a motivating object, because it is in potency to being actualized, not to having its actuality terminated; for it is a passive, not an active, power. Therefore what motivates it is truly a specifying object.

YOU WILL SAY: At least a motivating object must cooperate efficiently with the power in producing an act; therefore the motivating character in the object belongs to the genus of efficiency.

I answer first that this does not hold with respect to every power, but only with respect to a cognitive power, in which it is more probable that a species in the genus of efficient causality cooperates with the power in producing an act. This efficiency, however, is not the formal and per se account of the species, which per se says only that it is representative and takes the place of the object on which the act depends for its specification. That it also depends on the object effectively with respect to being does not belong to the object insofar as it is an object, nor to the species insofar as it is precisely representative and takes the place of an object. Rather, this is because it determines and actualizes the power intrinsically; once actualized and determined in this way, the power contributes vitally and effectively to the act. Therefore, just as the power’s force contributes effectively, so too its actuality and the intrinsic determination of the object contribute, so that it may elicit an act in its specification, which depends on the object.

If you ask how the account of a motivating object is understood in an objective cause, given that it does not move by way of an efficient cause, the response from what has been said is that it moves with respect to specification, not exercise. This is explained from St. Thomas, Prima Secundae, q. 9, a. 1, who says that “a power or force of the soul can be in potency in two ways: in one way, with respect to acting or not acting; in another, with respect to acting on this or that. Thus sight sometimes sees, sometimes does not see, and sometimes sees this—for example, white—and at another time something else—for example, black. It therefore needs something that moves and determines it with respect to both.” That which determines or moves it to act or not act is said to move on the side of the subject or exercise; that which moves it to act on this or that is said to move and determine on the side of the object. St. Thomas then adds “that the object moves by determining the act in the manner of a formal principle.” Moving by way of an agent—that is, on the side of the subject and exercise—belongs to the genus of efficient causality and is distinguished from motion by way of a motivating object, which is reduced to the genus of an extrinsic formal cause. This consists in nothing other than that a power, in order to elicit an act of this or that species, needs to be actualized or ordered to an extrinsic object, not only in the termination of the act but also in its eliciting and principle. For even in order to elicit an act, the power is not sufficiently determined to the species of that act; it is determined, moved, and completed by the object.

FROM THIS IT FOLLOWS that although sometimes the production of a thing, which belongs to the genus of efficient causality, must intervene when a motivating object actually moves, this is not what per se constitutes the formal account of a moving object; it holds accidentally or concomitantly. This occurs especially in cognitive powers, which cannot be moved by objects unless species are impressed in them and effectively produced. Yet the effective production of species is not objective causality in the formal account of a motivating object. For the effective production of species does not belong to the account of an object, as is clear in our intellect and in an angelic intellect. In us, the agent intellect effectively produces species, not the object; and in angels, God infuses species, which is to produce them effectively. According to St. Thomas, objects do not act efficiently on an angel’s intellect. It is agreed by all that in infused knowledge God effectively produces or infuses the species, and that they are not produced by the objects themselves. Thus the account of efficiently producing species is preserved apart from the account of the specifying object, and vice versa. Consequently, the formal account of a specifying motivating object does not consist in the efficient production of species.

It follows, second, that a motivating object is not formally identical with an instrumental sign, nor is a terminating object identical with a secondary object, although these often coincide materially.

The first point is clear because the account of a merely motivating object, although it moves toward something beyond itself, does not directly regard a signified thing that it represents and for which it takes the place. Rather, it directly regards a power as something to be moved by it. Hence it belongs to the line of an object coordinated with a power, not to the line of a representation that takes the place of another and is coordinated with the thing represented. The formalities are therefore diverse, since they directly regard different terms: a sign expresses the account of a means leading to something else, whereas a motivating object expresses the account of a principle moving a power. Hence a motivating object does not imply that it is something lower and less perfect than that toward which it moves—for example, when someone is moved by real being to know a being of reason, by God to know creatures, or by an angel’s essence to know its accidents. A sign, however, as a sign, is always something less perfect than the thing signified, since it takes its place and substitutes for it in the genus of what is cognizable. This is why the genus of sign is a categorical relation, as we said above, whereas the account of a motivating object is not a categorical relation: an object does not regard a power, but is regarded by it, since their relation is that of measure to measured, which is not mutual.

The second point is clear when I know a prototype through an image or an ox through a footprint. The prototype and the ox are merely terminating objects, since they are known through the species of another object; yet they are not secondary objects but principal ones, since they are intended first and per se, while the image and footprint lead to them.

THE FINAL CONCLUSION: A terminating object with respect to a cognitive or appetitive power also has the account of an extrinsic formal cause.

This is against some recent authors who think that a terminating object has the account of a pure term, like the term with respect to a categorical relation.

BUT THE CONCLUSION JUST STATED IS TAKEN FROM ST. THOMAS, Prima Secundae, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2, where he says “that an object is not matter from which, but matter about which, and in a certain way has the account of form, insofar as it gives species.” The holy Doctor is clearly speaking of a terminating object. For matter about which is not a moving principle of an act that moves a power to elicit an act, but terminates the act, because the act concerns it. Therefore a terminating object specifies extrinsically, for a motion takes its species from its term, as is said in Physics V,⁵ lect. 8. It is also taken from St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2,⁶ where he says “that the object terminates and perfects an operation and is its end.” But everything that perfects stands formally with respect to what can be perfected, at least extrinsically; and since it does not perfect by causing efficiently but by terminating, we say that it stands formally and extrinsically.

NEXT IT IS PROVED that a terminating object does not stand as a pure term, as it does with respect to a categorical relation. For a terminating object specifies an active power, which is not a categorical relation but regards an object by a transcendental order. Therefore an object is not a pure term; otherwise it would terminate only a categorical relation, not a transcendental one. That it terminates and specifies not in another genus of cause but in the genus of formal cause is inferred as follows. It does not stand as an efficient cause, since it is not a principle of action but a term; nor as a material cause, since it is not in a thing by affecting it as a receiving subject or a disposing cause; nor as an end, because an end is either an end that is an effect or an end that is a cause—that is, that for whose sake something is done. An end that is an effect does not specify as an effect, because as an effect it does not perfect an act or an active power, but is perfected or made by it; nor does it cause that act as an effect, but is caused by it. An end as a cause does not specify an act by terminating it, but metaphorically moves the efficient cause. In this way it does not regard the specification of an action or its essential predicate, but its existence, since it moves toward that; therefore it is numbered among the circumstances. As an object, however, it can specify, as is clear in Prima Secundae, q. 1, a. 4, where the specification of a moral act is taken from the end as a good and an object of the will. In q. 18, a. 6, and q. 19, a. 2, an end is said to specify insofar as it is the object of an interior act or of a commanding act; but it is a circumstance of the commanded act, which is done for the sake of the end. If, then, an end specifies, it takes on the account of an object. The account of an object specifying is therefore different from that of an end moving. Specification belongs to the genus of extrinsic formal cause, while the motion of an end belongs to final causality that moves toward producing things in existence. Moving toward being and existence, however, is outside specification.

From these points you can distinguish other divisions of object, such as into primary and secondary, formal and material. That which per se or first, or formally, specifies, or is the form and account of specifying, is called the object per se or the account of the object; the remainder is called the object secondarily, through another, and materially. The account of specifying, taken in itself, is also usually called the account under which or the object by which. But insofar as it is considered in some thing by affecting it, the thing thus affected is called the account which, while the material object is called the object that. An easy example is a colored and luminous wall with respect to sight.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

First, an argument is made against the first conclusion. The divine intellect and its power truly and properly have objects, for they are concerned first and per se with something: the intellect with the divine essence, and omnipotence with creatures. Yet they are not specified by those objects, for divine power is not specified by creatures; otherwise it would receive actuality and perfection from them, as well as species. Likewise, the divine essence does not specify the divine intellect; for there one cannot distinguish an extrinsic specifying thing from what is specified, just as one cannot distinguish what perfects from what can be perfected, or what actualizes from what can be actualized. Therefore the account of object does not consist in extrinsically specifying.

THE RESPONSE is that in divine things the account of object is found with imperfections set aside, that is, dependence on something as an extrinsic specifying and formally causing thing. For no species or thing specified is given there that is caused, and consequently there is no account of an object that is an extrinsic formal cause as cause. But in the acts of understanding and willing there is an account of object with respect to what belongs to perfection and actuality: a term and specifying thing is given for cognition, since cognition and volition must reach something. Nevertheless, the specifying thing is not distinct from what is specified, nor does it have the account of a cause with respect to it; they are one and the same because of supreme eminence, as is clear from St. Thomas, Prima Pars, q. 14, aa. 2 and 4. With respect to the executive power directed outward, or omnipotence, there is an account of object insofar as creatures are that about which this executive power of God is exercised, as its pure effects, not as what perfects the power, which has every perfection from itself.

Second, an argument is made against the account of a motivating object that we explained. Speaking of a motivating object formally as motivating, either the word motivating expresses the account of efficient motion or of formal motion. If the first, it is not properly and simply an object, as we showed above, because efficient motion does not give specification but existence. If the second, the account of a motivating object is not distinguished from that of a terminating object; both have the same mode of causality, namely formal causality, and thus the motivating and terminating object will specify in the same way. That the motivating object has the account of a principle does not change the account of extrinsic formal cause. Consequently, a motivating object does not have the account of an object insofar as it is motivating, but insofar as it agrees with a terminating object in the account of extrinsically specifying, not insofar as it has the account of a moving principle.

This is confirmed because, if a motivating object insofar as motivating expresses the proper account of an object, it follows that there is no account of object in general in which a terminating and a motivating object agree. For there can be no other common account for a motivating and a terminating object than regarding a power as something outside it. But this also belongs to an act, which is distinct from the power and regards it by specifying it, and yet is not its object. Therefore the account of object as such does not consist in regarding a power as something extrinsic that specifies it.

THE RESPONSE is that in a motivating object the word motivating is understood of formal motion by way of a principle with respect to a passive power, as was said above. Thus the specification of the act, and not only its exercise or being, depends on such an object—not on the side of termination but on the side of eliciting and of the principle.

When it is objected that in this it agrees with the terminating object, the response is that they agree in the genus of causing specification, but not in the mode or species of the act caused. Different habits and acts are likewise specified in the same general way of specification, but not by the same mode of specification, since they are of different species. The different mode of specifying and the different specification, as was said, are taken from the object’s standing by way of a principle or a term—that is, from whether the specification of an act depends on it in the eliciting of the act or in its termination. For, as St. Thomas often says, in Prima Secundae, q. 1 and q. 18 and elsewhere, the account of an act is taken from its principle and end. Standing by way of a principle induces a different mode of specifying from standing by way of a term, because it specifies an active or passive power, which are always different powers and have different acts.

In answer to the confirmation, just as power in general abstracts from active and passive power and agrees in the account of a principle of act, so object in general abstracts from a motivating and a terminating object and expresses an extrinsic specifying thing of a power on the side of a principle or a term. An act, however, is not wholly extrinsic to a power, since it proceeds from it. Or it is better to say that two things are considered in an act with respect to a power: the account of something produced or an effect, in which case it does not regard the power by specifying it, but receives from it its being, species, and nature; or the account of what perfects the power in acting, insofar as it finally consummates the action. In this case it does not specify except insofar as it stands on the side of the term in which the actuality of the power is consummated, and for this reason it takes on the account of a terminating object, like other effects with respect to their agents insofar as they perfect and consummate them in act.

A THIRD ARGUMENT: An object is motivating in the way in which the power that regards it is passive; for an object as motivating corresponds to a cognitive power insofar as it is passive. But a cognitive power is passive insofar as it receives species, and in this reception the object does not influence it as an object, but as an efficient and impressing cause. Therefore the account of a motivating object does not belong to the object as object, but to the account of an efficient cause or of what impresses species, since a passive power is passive as such insofar as before the act it undergoes something and receives species. But in that prior moment when the power receives species and is moved, an object is not presented, because it is not then reached as an object, when species are impressed.

This is confirmed because a motivating object can specify neither an act nor a power; therefore it specifies nothing.

The antecedent is proved: It does not specify an act, because only what is movable by an object is specifiable by it. But an act is not movable by an object, since it is an effect caused by the power and by the object. Therefore it is not specifiable by a motivating object, because a motivating object as motivating specifies only what is movable as movable. Nor can it specify a power, because an object specifies a power only through an act, as St. Thomas teaches in Prima Pars, q. 77, a. 3. Therefore, if it does not specify an act, neither does it specify a power.

THE RESPONSE is that a power is passive both with respect to an agent that impresses species and with respect to the impressed form. An impressed form has two functions: to inform entitatively or physically, which belongs materially to its species and is common to it with other accidents; and to inform intentionally, that is, representatively, by being the same as the object. In this way the object informs intentionally in the order in which the species does—that is, formally—although the object is outside the power and the species is within it. The effective impression of species, however, does not come from the object as something moving objectively, but from the producer of species; the productive power does not always belong to the thing that is the object, but to another agent, as the agent intellect is in us and God, who infuses species, is in angels. Hence the account of a motivating object is not the account of impressing or efficiently producing species, but of actualizing and determining a power objectively through a species, insofar as it informs intentionally, not merely entitatively. For this reason a motivating object is preserved with respect to an angel’s intellect, not because the object moves it by impressing species, but because it determines and actualizes the power formally, not entitatively as it is in itself but intentionally, as represented in the species; God, however, infuses that species effectively.

In answer to the confirmation, it is said that a motivating object specifies an act by determining or actualizing the passive power, which is movable by it, and by originating or causing the act with respect to specification. For a motivating object that specifies an act does not regard the act as something movable by it, but as something originated; it regards the power that it determines as something movable. Hence we deny that a motivating object specifies what is movable, which is like a subject; rather, it specifies the act of which it is the principle, as something originated by it. For, as St. Thomas says,⁷ an action is specified by its principle and end; but because the motivating object originates an act by moving and determining the power to elicit an act of this species, it is called a motivating object.

A FOURTH ARGUMENT is made against the account of a terminating object. An object is constituted by us as an extrinsic specifying thing; but a term as a term does not specify an act or power. Therefore a terminating object as terminating is not an object.

The minor is proved, first, because otherwise the term of a categorical relation would be its object, since it specifies by terminating. Second, an actual and real specifying thing of an act and power must be something real, since the species it gives is real and depends on it as on what perfects and actualizes. But a terminating object is not always something real; for the account of object is found even in a being of reason, as we said concerning the object of Logic in the introductory question, q. 1,⁸ Third, everything that specifies is at least an extrinsic formal cause. But every formal cause is a principle that gives being, for form is what gives being to a thing. Therefore every object is a principle insofar as it is an object and not a term, since it is a formal cause specifying. In this way it would be a motivating object, which specifies by way of a principle.

This is confirmed because a motivating and terminating object participate analogically in the account of object. Therefore one has it simply and the other in a qualified sense, and the account of object does not belong simply to both.

The antecedent is proved both because the account belongs to a real object and a being of reason, and because active and passive powers are related analogically in the genus of power, as is said in Metaphysics IX, lect. 1, as cited by St. Thomas.⁹ Therefore the corresponding motivating and terminating objects are also analogues. Hence the motivating object is what actualizes and informs simply; thus, analogically, both are said to specify or to have the account of a specifying form.

THE RESPONSE to the principal argument is to deny the minor.

In answer to the first proof, it is said that the term of a relation does not specify insofar as it is precisely a term, but insofar as it is subject to the foundation, without which the species of relations is not taken, as we said in q. 17,¹⁰ and is clear from St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3.¹¹ An object, however, specifies per se insofar as it is an object.

In answer to the second proof, it is said that an intrinsic specifying thing that gives species to an act must necessarily be something real. An extrinsic specifying thing need not be real, because it specifies not by informing and inhering, but by extrinsically terminating the tendency of another or determining it to elicit an act. Thus it suffices that, through a real species which informs the power intrinsically and really, it determine the power to an act, even if the object itself is not real in itself or does not really exist.

In answer to the third proof, it is said that a term, under different considerations, has the account of a cause or of an effect, just as causes are causes of one another. Insofar as it terminates precisely by way of execution and effect, it does not specify, but receives species and existence. But insofar as this term is considered as perfecting and consummating the act of a power in its completed being, it gives species by terminating and perfecting. It is then considered as a principle and extrinsic cause that gives being consummatively and finally, not by moving and initially; for it is the account of perfection in an act as consummated, not as initiated. Thus St. Thomas says in Prima Secundae, q. 33, a. 4, ad 2, “that operation causes pleasure as an efficient cause, while pleasure perfects operation as an end.” It therefore does not coincide with a motivating object. It also precedes in intention, although in execution it follows as an effect or receives existence; it does not give specification.

The antecedent is denied in answer to the confirmation. To the first proof it is said that an object’s being real or of reason makes a difference only in the account of being, not in the account of object and what is cognizable. It is entirely possible for something to be simply an object and not simply a being. For there are different distinctions among things under the aspects of thinghood and being, and others under the account of object and of what is cognizable, as Cajetan rightly observes in Prima Pars, q. 1, a. 3. Thus several things agree univocally in the account of what is knowable, but not in the account of being, or conversely. Likewise, they can agree specifically in the account of what is knowable and not in the account of being, or conversely, as is said more fully in the final question of the books of the Posterior Analytics,¹² It suffices now to give the example of Logic, which is univocally a science with the others that treat of real being, although it treats of a being of reason; and God and creature agree univocally in the account of what is knowable by metaphysics, but not in the account of being; and quantity and substance are univocally knowable by Mathematics and Physics, just as these sciences are univocally sciences, but not in the account of being. For the account of what is knowable expresses only the necessary connection of truth, which agrees univocally in the account of truth with any other necessary connection, even if they do not agree in the account of being. When it is said that an object perfects a power, the response is that a being of reason also perfects it, not formally by reason of itself, but by reason of its foundation and of the real being after whose likeness it is conceived.

If you say: This account of what is cognizable is transcendental with respect to this or that account of what is cognizable; therefore it is not univocal. The response is that what is cognizable in general, like truth, good, and the properties of being, is analogous to this or that cognizable thing in the manner of a certain quiddity predicable as a second predicate or as a first predicate, that is, transcendentally. But we call this or that determinate cognizable thing univocal with respect to subjects or beings to which it belongs denominatively by way of a fourth or fifth predicate, although those beings are not univocal entitatively, because it does not follow on being taken absolutely in itself, but comparatively and in relation to a cognitive power. The same mode of comparison can apply to things that do not agree univocally in themselves and entitatively.

In answer to the second proof, it is said that St. Thomas plainly speaks of power as a principle for acting. In this way passive and active power do not agree univocally, because passive power does not originate an act except dependently on active power, since it is not in act of itself. But as specified by an extrinsic principle, passive and active powers are univocally related, since both have a signification dependent in this way. As for the further point that a motivating object actualizes simply, whereas a terminating object does not, the response is that in specifying extrinsically both actualize simply, insofar as a power or act depends on each of them for its action and perfection. Although that by which a passive power is moved so that an act may be elicited comes closer, in its mode of moving, to the actualization of an intrinsic form, specification depends simply on both.

To understand the point of difficulty clearly, WE SUPPOSE that we are not now speaking of the sign and signification as the relation itself in which a sign formally consists, as we showed above¹; for a relation is in no way effective, but is purely a relation to a term, and to regard something is not to cause it. We are therefore speaking of the foundation of sign and signification, insofar as it represents something to a cognitive power, for which it substitutes and whose place it takes in representing it to that power. AND WE INQUIRE whether this leading and presenting, or representation, of its significate to the power is a kind of effecting, or in what kind of cause it should be placed.

In the very act of signifying or representing we can DISTINGUISH three things that seem to belong to making an object present in a power; for to represent is nothing other than to make an object present to, or united with, a power.

The first is the emission or production of species, which takes place from an object and an extrinsic sign into a power.

The second is the arousal of a power so that it attends; this is distinct from the impression of species itself, for even after receiving species one needs to be aroused in order to attend.

The third is concurrence with the power in eliciting knowledge of the thing signified. In eliciting this act, the extrinsic sign concurs by means of the intrinsically received species, through which it concurs not only in forming knowledge of itself but also of the signified, to which it leads. This concurrence with the power, however, is not signifying,² because this concurrence belongs to the eliciting of cognition. The eliciting of cognition is not signifying; if it is cognition of the signified, it is the term and end of signifying, for the sign moves in order that knowledge of the signified be received. But if it is cognition of the sign itself, it is presupposed to signifying, because from what is known it leads to something else, or signifies it. We do not doubt that this representation of the signified and leading of the power to attain it, since it is something newly occurring in the nature of things, must have some efficient cause. But we inquire whether, insofar as it depends on the sign, it depends in the order of efficient causality, so that the sign effects signification and signifying in second act is effecting; or whether it is effected by another cause, while the sign has the role of an object objectively.

LET THERE BE A SINGLE CONCLUSION: Signifying or representing is in no way effected by the sign, and, speaking formally, signifying is not effecting.

Thus this proposition, “A sign effects,” is never per se in the fourth mode. This conclusion, very common among recent Thomists, who often discuss it in their daily disputations, may first be gathered from St. Thomas, De Veritate, q. 11, art. 1, ad 4³, where he says that “the proximate efficient cause of knowledge is not signs, but the reasoning that proceeds from principles to a conclusion.”

But it has its FOUNDATION chiefly in two principles:

The first is that an object, insofar as it exercises objective causality with respect to a power and represents itself, does not do so efficiently; it is merely as an extrinsic form, which is applied and made present to the power through species by another efficient cause. If the object itself also has the effective power to apply itself, it has this materially and per accidens, as in natural things a form exhibits its presence in matter. Yet that presence, insofar as it comes from the form, is not effected efficiently but formally; it is effected efficiently by what applies and unites the form.

The second principle is that a sign succeeds to and substitutes for the object in this same line and order of objective causality, but not in the character of what applies efficiently or leads the power to the signified efficiently. It does so objectively, not principally but by substitution. For this reason a sign is called instrumental: not as an instrument of an efficient cause, but as a substitute for the object—not informing as a species does, but representing from outside.

The first principle is explained as follows. As we saw in the preceding article, the character of an object does not consist in its emitting and producing its species in a cognitive power, and so on. For species are sometimes infused efficiently by God, as in angels and infused knowledge, without the object impressing them efficiently. The fundamental reason is that the character of an object is preserved in something's being passively representable and knowable by a power. But to be passively representable in itself and as such does not imply a power that applies and unites the object to the power; it implies that which is united and made present. For just as to represent is to make present, so to be represented and representable is to be made present. If, then, the character of an object is preserved by its being representable, it follows that actively making a representation lies outside the character of an object and is not required for it. Likewise, if a form consists in being something unifiable with matter as that which informs it and makes matter intimately present to itself, the character of form cannot consist in its efficiently applying and uniting itself to matter. Hence St. Thomas compares an object to a form or actuality by which a power is made actual and informed. The intelligible is an act of the intellect, as he teaches in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, art. 2, q. 79, art. 2, and many other places. Therefore representing, or making present, does not belong to the object itself, as formally an object, as though it were the efficient cause of this presentation; it belongs to it as a form and act presented and united to the power.

For the same reason it is clear that arousing efficiently does not belong to the character of an object: both because this arousal is effected by another cause, either inwardly by God or outwardly by a person or another agent who proposes and applies the object to sense; and because in arousal the object is what is applied to the power, and it is not required that the object itself be what applies it efficiently. Finally, in producing knowledge, an object placed within a power through a species can concur efficiently, not by the force of an object as specifying, but by the force of a power determined and actualized by the object, from which the power and object constitute one principle in act; the object itself does not add an efficient power to the power. This concurrence or production of cognition is not signifying or representing: the eliciting of cognition presupposes an object represented to the power and moving it to tend toward consummate cognition and representation of the signified. Thus that cognition of the signified is the term and end of signification, for it moves one to know.

The second principle is explained from the proper character of a sign as a sign: a sign is substituted for an object in order to lead it to the power in the way the object would do so of itself in its character as object. An instrumental, extrinsic sign represents the signified only by representing itself as a better-known object, and the signified as something virtually contained in it, or as less known, to which it bears some relation and connection. Its concurrence in representing the signified to the power is therefore the same as its concurrence in representing itself, because by representing itself it also represents the signified as pertaining to itself. Hence the emission of species and the arousal of the power belong to a sign in the same way as to an object when it represents itself: it causes this objectively, not efficiently. For a sign represents the signified only by first representing itself as an object, then extending its own representation to something else virtually implicit and contained in it. A sign therefore does not represent objectively in an absolute way, but objectively and instrumentally, as serving another. If it is a formal sign, it is clear that it represents not efficiently but formally through itself, as is clear from its definition and evident in knowledge and concepts, which will be treated in the following question.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

An objection may first be made from various authorities of St. Thomas. In Summa theologiae III, q. 64, art. 4, ad 1, he says “that in the voice there is a certain power for arousing another's mind, arising in the voice insofar as it proceeds from the speaker's conception.” This power of which St. Thomas speaks is a physically efficient power. For there St. Thomas says that the spiritual power in the sacraments is related in the same way as that arousing power in the voice. The power in the sacraments is effective; so too is the power in the voice for arousing, and consequently for signifying, since arousal occurs by signification.

Likewise, in De Veritate, q. 11, art. 1, ad 11⁴, St. Thomas says “that the words of a teacher are more closely related to causing knowledge than sensible things outside the soul, insofar as they are signs of intelligible intentions.” Therefore, insofar as signs cause knowledge, they do so not by representing objectively but by leading to the signified thing.

Again, in Sentences IV, dist. 1, q. 1, art. 1, question 1, ad 5⁵, he says that “a demonstration quia proceeds from a common sign.” But a demonstration produces knowledge efficiently by reason of its matter, from which it is composed, not by reason of a second intention. Therefore the sign from which a demonstration is composed efficiently influences knowledge.

Finally, in Opusculum 16, § Ostenso igitur etc.⁶, he says “that the action of a mirror, which is to represent, cannot be attributed to a human being.” Therefore there is a representing or signifying that is an action.

THE RESPONSE to the first passage of St. Thomas is that the arousing power in the voice is not the voice's actual signification or signifying, since someone is instead aroused so as to attend to the voice's signification. It is the very use of the intellect of the speaker, who manifests his concept by means of the voice, as Cajetan observes on that passage. This use is something beyond signification, since it applies the voice that signifies so that another may attend. Thus this arousal and arousing power, like a kind of latent energy, proceeds efficiently from the person uttering and using the voice, while the signifying voice moves representatively and objectively. St. Thomas compares this arousing power—that is, the use of the voice derived from the speaker's intellect—with the efficacious motion by which God moves and uses the sacraments to produce grace, because the sacraments are like signs and words of God, who arouses us to grace and produces grace itself. This power is quite distinct from the sacraments' signification, since it is added to it, just as the use of the voice and its arousing power are added to the voice's signification. For arousal occurs so that we may attend to the signification and be moved by it. This signification or representation, insofar as it comes from the signifying voice, is not efficient but objective. But insofar as the voice is moved by a speaker who arouses, it has an effective power to arouse—not arising from representation, but derived from the one who proposes and moves the signifying voice. Thus the speaker applies the signifying voice, while the signifying voice is what is applied and signifies representatively. We need not now dispute whether that power and use of the voice is some physical power added to the voice or something moral. It suffices for our purpose that this arousal, insofar as it is effective, whether morally or physically, is not signifying itself, nor does it proceed efficiently from the sign as signifying—unless perhaps signification itself is called an action and efficiency morally, metaphorically, or rather grammatically.

To the second passage from De Veritate, the response is that St. Thomas says the teacher's words are more closely related to causing knowledge, but he does not say they are so efficiently. It suffices that they are more closely related representatively or objectively, because a sign is a substitute for the thing signified.

To the third passage the response is that⁷ in a demonstration from a sign, the sign's representing and signifying does not effect the demonstration or produce knowledge. Rather, this proceeds efficiently from the intellect, moved by an object and by a sign that represents objectively, not efficiently. Accordingly, St. Thomas says in the passage cited above, De Veritate, q. 2, art. 1, ad 4⁸, “that the proximate efficient cause of knowledge is not signs, but the intellect itself.”

To the final passage the response is that representing is called the action of a mirror in a presuppositional sense, not formally, because by refracting light the mirror efficiently generates an image that represents.

A second objection is made: Some character of effecting is included in the very definition of an instrumental sign; therefore a sign, formally insofar as it is a sign, effects.

The antecedent is proved from Augustine's well-known definition: “A sign is that which, in addition to the appearances it presents to the senses, causes something else to come into cognition.” Both presenting appearances and causing something else to come into cognition imply efficiency; for by the same motion and causality by which it presents appearances in order to represent itself, it leads to cognition of another thing. But presenting appearances is effecting and producing them; therefore leading to cognition of another thing is also to act efficiently. This is included in the definition of a sign; therefore it is essential to a sign to effect insofar as it is a sign, which is to signify. For to represent efficiently is nothing other than to effect a representation. But a sign effects species, which are representations; therefore it represents efficiently.

This is confirmed because many kinds of efficiency belong to a sign insofar as it signifies. Sacraments, which are signs, effect insofar as they signify; therefore in them signifying formally is effecting. Otherwise they would not formally be practical signs if they did not effect insofar as they signify. Likewise, insofar as it signifies, a sign is said to arouse a power, transmit species, and contribute to inferring a conclusion, all of which belong to efficient causality.

The response is that those two things included in the definition of a sign—presenting species and causing something to come into cognition—do not express efficiency by way of efficient causality. For presenting species is common to signs and non-signs: an object that represents itself without signifying itself also presents species, and it does not do this efficiently insofar as it is an object, as we have proved. Therefore the efficiency of signification cannot consist in presenting species. If external objects do impress species efficiently, that efficiency does not constitute them as objects; rather, it comes from some power, either a hidden power of heaven itself, as St. Thomas suggests in De potentia, q. 5, art. 8, as some think, or an evident power, such as light in colors or refracted air in sounds, and so on. In the second phrase, causing something to come into cognition, the word causing does not signify efficiency on the sign's part, but an objective representation, as it were, or representation in the role of an object. This does not signify efficient concurrence, but that of an extrinsic formal cause that moves representatively toward cognition of itself and, beyond this, toward knowledge of another.

To the confirmation, the response is that all the efficiency listed in the argument is extrinsic and added to the sign as signifying; signification does not per se require it to be joined to signification. Hence “a sign effects” is never per se in the fourth mode. The sacraments do not effect insofar as they signify because signification is formally an effecting; rather, efficiency is joined and attached to signification, either morally, insofar as they are practical and proceed from God's command and the minister's practical intention—not simply stating something, but directing an action—or also physically, insofar as they receive from God's command the power to produce grace. As for the added claims about arousing the power and transmitting species, we have already said that such arousal belongs to a sign not efficiently insofar as it is a sign, but objectively, or in the role of an object. Objective causality belongs to an extrinsic formal cause, not an efficient one.

A third objection is made: There can be a formal sign that is denominated formal not from the relation itself—which is what is most formal in a sign, otherwise every sign would be formal because it involves a relation—but from its foundation, since the relation of sign is founded on something that, by informing a power, represents to it, as a concept or act of knowledge does. Therefore, likewise, since the foundation of an instrumental sign effects—namely, transmits species, arouses and unites the power, and represents the thing to it—it can be said to signify efficiently, just as a formal sign is said to signify formally.

This is confirmed because a sign is truly called instrumental, and therefore also effective, since an instrumental cause is reduced to an efficient cause, not a formal one. Nor is it valid to say that it is an instrument logically, not physically. For a logical instrument is something that causes by means of an intention of reason. But a sign, especially a natural sign, does not cause by means of an intention of reason, but through the reality of its representation.

THE RESPONSE is that it is entirely true that a sign is formal or instrumental by reason of the foundation of the sign-relation itself, not from the side of the relation. Yet since this foundation is the very principle of manifesting another thing from the side of the object, or in the object's place, it is not incompatible with its acting in the order of formal causality from the object's side; it is incompatible with its acting in the order of efficient causality. For the very character of an object is in itself an act and form of a power and, per accidens, because it cannot exist entitatively within the power, it exists intentionally through its signs, which take its place, such as concepts and acts of knowledge. Thus extrinsic formal causality belongs per se to an object. It is not incompatible with its sometimes being intrinsic, per se or through its signs, joined and united to the power. But for it to move the power efficiently by applying and representing an object lies outside the line of objective causality and belongs to another line of causation, not to an object as object, as we have often said. If an object also has the effective power to apply and present an object by producing species, this will be per accidens and materially, or concomitantly, not per se, formally, and in the fourth mode.

But if you insist: What, then, is signifying and manifesting, if it is neither arousing nor emitting species nor efficiently producing cognition? The response is that it is making an object present to a power in the place of the object or signified. The presence of an object in a power in first or second act depends on many causes: on what produces species or applies the object efficiently; on the power, which also efficiently generates knowledge; on the object presenting itself formally from outside, or specifically; and on the sign as substituting for it in the same kind of objective causality—not as principal, but as its instrument or substitute, and not efficiently.

To the confirmation, the response is that a sign is called instrumental objectively, not efficiently—that is, it acts in place of an object, as was said. It is rightly called a logical instrument, not a physical one, not because it acts by means of an intention of reason, but because it does not represent or lead the power to the signified unless it is first known, and thus it signifies as something known. What belongs to a thing insofar as it is known is said to belong to it logically, because Logic treats things insofar as they are known. The truth is that this influence of the sign is not effective but objective: it acts in the role and place of the signified object, in the same order and line, not in the order of efficient causality, as has been proved. Thus this instrument is not reduced to an efficient cause, nor is it strictly an instrument, but metaphorically or logically.

It is certain that brute animals and the external senses do not use signs by comparison and collation, which together require discursive thought. THE DIFFICULTY, however, is whether signs are properly used to know the things signified without reasoning. This certainly helps us understand the way in which a sign represents and signifies to a power.

FIRST CONCLUSION: Brute animals properly use signs, both natural signs and signs arising from custom.

This is taken from St. Thomas, q. 24 of De Veritate, art. 2, ad 7.¹, where he says that “from memory of past punishments or benefits it happens that brute animals apprehend something as a friend to be pursued, or as an enemy to be fled.” See also 1. 2. q. 40. art. 3. Concerning natural signs he says in q. 9 of De Veritate, art. 4, ad 10² that brute animals express their concepts by natural signs. He speaks of custom in 1. Metaph. lect. 1.³, showing that some animals are capable of training, that is, through another’s instruction they can become accustomed to doing or avoiding something. Brute animals, therefore, can use signs by custom.

THE REASON FOR THIS, besides the daily experience by which we see brute animals moved by signs, both natural ones, such as groaning, bleating, singing, and so forth, and those arising from custom—for example, a dog moves when called by the name to which it is accustomed, although it does not understand the act of naming but is led by custom—is this: we see a brute animal, upon seeing one thing, tend toward another distinct thing. For example, after perceiving a scent it follows a path; or, seeing a branch or log lying across the road, it turns aside; hearing a lion’s roar, it trembles or flees; and there are hundreds of other cases in which the brute does not stop at what it perceives by an external sense, but is led through it to something else. This is plainly to use a sign: namely, to represent one thing not only for itself, but for another distinct from itself. That this also extends to signs arising from custom is clear from what was said above: since some brute animals are capable of training, they do not perceive from the outset certain things that they later come to know as custom develops. A dog, for example, is not moved from the outset when called by this or that name, but later is moved once it has acquired the habit. Some brute animals, then, use signs by custom; for they are not moved by the imposition of the name itself, since that imposition, which depends on the will of the one imposing it, is not made known to them.

MY SECOND CLAIM: Not only internal senses but also external senses, in us and in brute animals, perceive signification and use signs.

We are speaking of an instrumental sign. As for a formal sign, it depends on what will be said in the following disputation: whether species or acts of knowing are formal signs, and whether external senses form some image or idol in place of a concept.

THE CONCLUSION IS PROVED first from St. Thomas, who teaches that the thing signified by a sign is seen in the sign itself, as is clear in q. 8 of De Veritate, art. 5.⁴: “We know,” he says, “Socrates by sight in two ways: insofar as sight is assimilated to Socrates, and insofar as it is assimilated to an image of Socrates; and either of these assimilations suffices for knowing Socrates.” And below: “When external sight sees Hercules in his statue, the cognition does not occur through some other likeness of the statue.”⁵ See also 3. Contra Gent. cap. 49. Since an image and a statue represent to a power what they signify in the manner of a sign, if external sight in a statue or image reaches not only the statue but also what the image represents, it knows something less known through something better known—which is to use signs.

Second, the conclusion is proved as follows. There is no reason to deny an external sense the ability to be led from one thing to another without reasoning and collation. But using a sign and signification requires nothing more, nor is reasoning necessary. Therefore the use of a sign can be attributed to the external senses.

The major is proved because an external sense can distinguish one object from another within the scope of its knowability—for example, sight distinguishes white from green, and one image from another, such as an image representing Christ from one representing the Blessed Virgin. It can also, through a proper sensible, such as color, reach a common sensible, such as motion or shape, and distinguish one from another. Therefore it can know one thing in another, or be led from one to another; for this it suffices that it be able to distinguish one from another and to know one as contained in or belonging to the other. This suffices for being led from one to another: if it distinguishes one from another and knows one as contained in the other—as it knows shape as affecting or being affected by color, an image as in a mirror, Hercules in a statue, or green as distinguished from white—nothing more is required for it to know one through the other and be led from one to another.

The minor is established because a sign requires nothing else in its definition than that it represent something other than itself and be a means leading to something else. It does not require that this occur through reasoning, or through comparing and knowing the relation of one thing to another; otherwise signs could not be found even in the internal senses of brute animals. And if formal reasoning were required, an angel would not use signs either, which is false.

It must nevertheless be observed that an external sense cannot know the signified thing apart from the sign and in itself. For it is often absent; and even if it is present and known through the sign as distinct from it, this would require comparing one with the other. Otherwise, how would it be evident that this thing, taken distinctly and apart from that one, is what that one signifies? Therefore the sense knows the signified thing as contained in the sign and belonging to it; as St. Thomas says, it knows Hercules in the statue. Nothing more is required for a sign: a sign represents no more of its signified thing than what is contained in it. Thus it is not necessary to know the signified thing through a fuller and more perfect cognition, by comparing and setting it against the sign as distinct from it and in terms of the relation of one to the other. Yet the signified thing is known as contained in the sign, just as one knows that this is an image of a man and not a horse, or that this one is of Peter and not Paul. That would not be possible if the signified thing were wholly unknown.

BUT YOU WILL OBJECT: The signified thing must be known as distinct from the sign. For if it is known as identical with the sign, one arrives at cognition of something other than the sign, which is required for signification. But by sight the signified thing is not seen as distinct from the sign. For example, when an image of St. Peter is seen, St. Peter, who is absent, is not reached by sight; and it is he, as absent, who is signified. For whatever is present to sight is nothing but the sign and image. Therefore the signified thing is not reached as distinct from the sign, and so one does not arrive from the sign at the signified thing; rather, external cognition is wholly spent on the sign.

Some are persuaded by this argument to assert that an external sense uses a sign only when the signified thing is also present to it, not when it is absent. But two considerations count against this solution.

First, St. Thomas admits that one who sees a statue of Hercules sees Hercules in the statue; and in 3. Contra Gent. cap. 49, he says that a man is seen in a mirror through his likeness. Yet it is clear that the man whose likeness is in the mirror can be behind the one looking and not present to him.

Second, if both the sign and the signified thing are presented to the sense, the sense is not guided from the sign to the signified thing as something apart from it. Rather, it sees the signified thing by its own species, as present to it and presenting itself to sight. Therefore the signified thing is not then seen through the sign, nor is the eye guided from the sign to it; instead, each is made manifest by itself—unless perhaps one sees, by comparing the sign with the signified thing, that this is a sign of that. But this requires an act that compares and knows the relation under a concept and the formal aspect of looking toward the term comparatively, which certainly does not belong to an external sense.

Therefore we answer simply that a sense knows the signified thing in the sign in the way in which it is present in the sign, but not merely in the way in which it is identical with the sign. When a proper sensible, such as color, and a common sensible, such as shape or motion, are seen, shape is not seen as identical with color, but as joined to color and made visible through it; nor are color and shape seen separately. So when a sign is seen and the signified thing is made present in it, the signified thing is reached as joined to the sign and contained in it, not as standing apart and absent.

And if someone presses the question, “What is that in the signified thing which is joined to the sign and present in it, apart from the sign itself and its entity?” The answer is that it is the signified thing itself in another kind of being, just as the thing represented by a species is the very object itself in intentional, not real, being. Thus, just as someone who saw a concept would see what is contained in the concept as represented in it, and not only what has the role of representing, so one who sees an external image sees not only its office or character as representative, but also what is represented insofar as it is in the image. But in seeing what is represented insofar as it is in the image, one sees something distinct from the image, because an image, as image, is representative, not what is represented. One sees that thing, however, as contained and present in the image, not apart and absent; in a word, one sees it as distinct from the image, not as separate and apart.

FROM WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, THEN, IT IS GATHERED that the character of a sign is univocal in brute animals and in us, because the character of a sign does not depend on the way a power uses it—by reasoning or comparing, or by simply reaching it—but on the way the sign represents, namely, by making something other than itself objectively present. It does this in the same way whether the power knows simply or by reasoning.

THE ARGUMENTS ARE ANSWERED.

The first argument is drawn from authorities. For St. Thomas says in 2. 2. q. 110. art. 1., “every representation consists in a certain collation, which properly belongs to reason; hence, although brute animals manifest something, they do not intend to manifest it.” Therefore brute animals do not properly use signs and representation, except very materially and remotely, insofar as they do something from which manifestation follows—a thing inanimate objects can also do.

Likewise, in q. 9 of De Veritate, art. 4, ad 4.⁶, he says that, properly speaking, a sign can be called so only if it is something from which one arrives at cognition of another, as it were by reasoning; for this reason he denies such signs to angels. Therefore, by the same reasoning, they must be denied to brute animals, since they do not reason.

THE RESPONSE is that in the first passage St. Thomas speaks only of manifestation and representation performed in a rational way, not in a natural way; on this point see Cajetan in the same place. Hence St. Thomas adds that “brute animals do not intend to manifest, although they manifest something.” He therefore holds that they manifest something, even though they do not intend signification. Thus signification when intended requires collation and reasoning, but signification absolutely does not. Nor are they said to signify merely because they do something from which signification follows; they are said to do so because they exercise signification and perceive the signified thing, which inanimate things do not do.

To the second passage, the response is that when a sign is said to be properly required in discursive cognition, this concerns the proper perfection of signifying, not what is required to preserve the essence of a sign absolutely. The character of a sign is seen more expressively and distinctly in discursive cognition than in simple cognition, although it is found in the latter as well, as St. Thomas teaches in other places. Angels, too, use signs, because they possess reasoning eminently, although in us it appears formally.

The second argument: For the use of a sign, cognition of the sign and its signification is required; likewise, cognition of the sign and the signified thing must be ordered so that one cognition is coordinated with the other and derived from it. Otherwise the definition is not preserved: that from a prior cognition of itself it represents something else. But these two conditions cannot be preserved without some comparative and discursive cognition. For the signification of something cannot be perceived unless its order or fittingness to something else is perceived; knowing an order, however, is knowing a relation and comparison, which the sense of a brute animal certainly cannot know, and an external sense even less. Similarly, if one cognition is coordinated with another and drawn from it, so that one arrives from one thing at another, this is reasoning and comparative knowing, which in no way belongs to the senses of brute animals.

This is confirmed because when an object in which another is contained is represented or apprehended, that simple apprehension stops only at the immediate object presented in a simple way; otherwise it would not be simple cognition if it passed from one object to another and moved between them. Therefore it requires a cognitive power that knows comparatively and by collation, and through more than a simple tendency; but all the senses in brute animals know simply and not by collation.

Experience itself in us supports this: when we perceive a sign but not its signifying force, we must collate the sign with the signified thing in order to elicit cognition of the signified thing from the sign. Therefore, since brute animals lack a comparative power, they cannot perceive the force of a sign naturally unknown to them, and thus they will not proceed from custom to understanding the signified thing.

THE RESPONSE is that the use of a sign does not require two cognitions, nor that one arrive from one cognition at another; it suffices to arrive from one thing known at another thing known. It is one thing to reach one object through another object known, and another to cause one cognition from another cognition. For signification it suffices to arrive from one thing known at another; it is not necessary to pass from one cognition to another. Hence the Philosopher says in On Memory and Recollection⁷ that the movement to an image and to the thing of which it is an image is the same; St. Thomas explains this there, lect. 3.⁸, and in 3. p. q. 25. art. 3., of movement to an image not as it is some thing, but as image—that is, insofar as it exercises the office of representing and leading to something else. “For in this way the movement to the image is one and the same as that which is to the thing,” says St. Thomas. Cajetan rightly understands this of an image considered in the exercise of its role as image, or in its office of representation, not as it is a thing in itself, as it were in actu signato. And that the movement to the image and to the thing of which it is an image is the same on the part of the apprehensive movement or cognition, as Cajetan observes there, is the common consent of all, since in the cognition of one relative its correlative is included. Thus reasoning is not necessary; simple cognition suffices for the thing itself, contained and signified in the sign, to be reached when the image or sign is seen.

As for the claim that cognition of signification is cognition of some relation and order, the response is that one need not posit in brute animals cognition of a relation formally and comparatively. Rather, they know without comparison or collation the exercise of that which grounds a relation. A brute animal knows a distant thing toward which it moves, remembers a past thing, and has hope of future prey, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. 2. q. 40. art. 3., without knowing the relation of the future, the past, or distance as such. It knows in exercise what is distant or future or representative, where the relation is grounded, though it does not know that relation formally and comparatively.

To the confirmation, the response is that in simple cognition, without passing into reasoning or collation, one can reach not only the object immediately presented or set before the sense, but also what is contained in it. Thus external sight sees Hercules in a statue, and a species representing a colored thing also represents shape, motion, and the other common sensibles contained in and joined to it. Yet cognition does not cease to be simple for this reason, although what is known is not simple but multiple; otherwise we could not see several objects in a single act of vision. And if we can do that, why not also know things that are ordered, one through another, and consequently the signified thing through the sign and as contained in the sign?

As for that experience, the response is that with signs whose signification we do not know from the outset, both we and brute animals need custom. But we become accustomed with reason and reasoning, whereas their memory is strengthened by something heard or known repeatedly—for example, a certain name—especially if they are thereby affected by some benefit or harm, so that they remember it in order to flee or pursue. Thus memory suffices for habituation, and brute animals that lack memory do not become accustomed. See St. Thomas, 1. Metaph. lect. 1.⁹, and q. 24. de Veritate art. 2. ad 7.¹⁰

The final argument: A sheep, for example, on hearing a roar, apprehends a lion only as harmful, not as represented by the force of the roar; therefore it does not use the roar as a sign.

The consequence is clear, because one can use a sign only for that which is represented by the force of that sign. Therefore, if what the animal apprehends is not represented by the force of that sign but from elsewhere, strictly speaking it does not use that sign as a sign. The antecedent is proved as follows: a sheep apprehends a lion as harmful by natural instinct; therefore it does not reach it through a prior cognition. For what is known by natural instinct is not reached through a prior cognition; thus it does not reach the lion as harmful through a sign. It reaches it in no other way than insofar as it is harmful.

This is confirmed because a sign is essentially a means leading to cognition of the signified thing. But means differ according to their different ordering to the end; therefore signs do too. Yet signs in human beings and brute animals are not ordered to the signified thing univocally, since brute animals are not carried toward it by knowing the order and relation of the sign to it as human beings do. Therefore “to signify” is not said univocally of them and of brute animals, just as neither “to know” nor “to be trained” is.

THE RESPONSE is that a sheep, on hearing a roar, apprehends a lion as harmful and as harmful in this particular way: it flees from and fears a lion’s roar more than a wolf’s howl, precisely because the roar belongs to a lion. Hence it distinguishes one from the other; this would not happen unless it were led by those signs to the lion and to the wolf as things distinct from one another and harmful in different ways. That it forms a judgment about fleeing the lion or wolf by natural instinct does not rule out that this occurs through a prior cognition. For some cognition must necessarily precede in the external sense—either seeing the lion or hearing its roar—so that the estimative power may apprehend it as an enemy and judge it to be one. Brute animals do have judgment, but without indifference; hence it is determined to one course and proceeds from natural instinct. This instinct does not exclude cognition and judgment, but indifference. On this see St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 83. art. 1. et q. 24. de Veritate art. 2.¹¹

To the confirmation, the response is that “sign” and “to signify” are taken univocally according to the ordering to the signified thing as something capable of being manifested to a power. The fact that this occurs in one way or another, according to how the power uses the sign, does not make the character of sign analogical or equivocal with respect to its function of manifesting; it makes for a different mode of the power in cognition and use of the sign. Nor is the case like knowing and representing: “to know” formally signifies cognition according to reason and inference, which does not belong to a brute animal; whereas “to represent by signifying” signifies precisely the manifestation of one thing through some means, without determining that this occurs by inference or reason.

COROLLARY APPENDIX FROM THE WHOLE QUESTION.

Gathering together what we have said in this question about the nature and character of a sign, it is clear what the definition of a sign is, what conditions it requires, and how the character of a sign differs from an image and from other things that manifest something else.

The definition of a sign in general is indeed essential. We defined a sign in general by abstracting from formal and instrumental signs, namely: “That which represents something other than itself.” For the definition circulated from Augustine¹², “A sign is that which, beyond the species it impresses upon the senses, brings something else into cognition,” is handed down only for an instrumental sign. The definition given here is handed down by St. Thomas in 4. dist. 1. q. 1. art. 1. quaestiunc. 1. ad 5.¹³, where he says that “a sign imports something manifest to us, by which we are led to cognition of another.” And in q. 9 of De Veritate, art. 4, ad 4.¹⁴, he says that “a sign, speaking generally, is anything known in which something else is known”; here generally means the same as “in general.”

This definition is essential in the way in which relatives are said to be defined essentially through their foundations and in relation to their term; for the relation is specified by its foundation and term. The character of the representative, however, does not consist in a formal predicamental relation, since something representative exists even when its term does not, as is clear when an emperor is represented by an image after his death. Therefore the character of the representative remains even when the relation does not exist, and thus it is not formally a relation; rather, in a sign it is the foundation of a relation, insofar as it is referred to another, grounds the representation of another, and does not rest in itself. Thus the foundation of a sign is handed down through genus and difference. For “representative” is the genus, since it is common both to that which represents itself, as an object that moves one to cognition of itself, and to that which represents something other than itself, as a sign. It is narrower than the nature of what manifests, because many things manifest without representing: light, which manifests by illuminating rather than representing, and a habit, which is also called a light, as well as other things that manifest effectively but not representatively and objectively.

From this you will gather that in the definition of a sign the word represents is taken strictly and most formally: for that which represents in such a way that it manifests in no other way than by representing; that is, on the part of the representing object, it is so disposed that it serves only by representing and manifests in no other way than by representing.

Hence you will exclude many things that represent something other than themselves but are not signs, and conclude that a sign must be better known and more manifest than the signified thing in its representing, while being dissimilar to and lower than it in being and in the character by which it is knowable.

The first point is clear, because many things manifest things other than themselves by containing them, illuminating them, causing them, or inferring them. Thus they do not merely represent, but also illuminate, and they display something by virtue of some connection, not by virtue of pure representation—that is, not in the office of representing and presenting it to a power in place of something else. Thus premises, insofar as they infer, do not signify the conclusion (although a demonstration is sometimes inferred from a sign, but there “signifying” has a merely material role); light does not signify colors but manifests them; and God does not signify creatures, although he represents them, because he contains them not merely by representing them and standing in their place, but also as their cause, manifesting them by his light. Hence nothing can manifest another purely by representing it unless it is lower and less than what it represents, as though substituted for it and acting in its place.

It must be dissimilar, because it is better known and more manifest; otherwise, if it were equally manifest, there would be no greater reason for this to be the sign of that than for this to be the sign of something else. It must be lower and less, since, as we have seen, it cannot be equal. If it were superior, it would contain or cause the other thing, not represent it purely and act in its place. For what is superior does not represent another unless it causes it; otherwise a human being would represent everything inferior to him, and the highest angel all the things in the world. If it represents another because it contains and causes it in a superior way, it does not represent it purely and precisely in its place, and so it is not a sign.

From this you will gather what conditions are required for something to be a sign. Essentially, it consists in an ordering to the signified thing as a distinct thing capable of being manifested to a power; thus neither the signified thing nor the power is among the required conditions, but each belongs to the essential character. Likewise, the character of being representative is required, but on the side of the foundation. Hence the representative as such is not a predicamental relation, even if it represents another, but a transcendental one; in a sign, however, it grounds the predicamental relation of what is measured to the signified thing.

Therefore, besides these, or as consequences of them, the three conditions already mentioned are required: First, that it be better known than the signified thing, not by nature but with respect to us. Second, that it be lower or less perfect than the signified thing. Third, that it be dissimilar to it.

Hence it follows that one image is not said to be the sign of another image, nor one egg the sign of another egg, nor are things of the same species signs of one another, insofar as in such cases neither is a sign of the other, because each is equally primary. It is no objection that one image is copied from another; that is accidental to the character of a sign, just as one human being comes from another but is not that person’s sign, although he is an image. For each image, in its signifying character, has the same prototype represented per se, although one image may be considered more excellent than another because it is older, earlier, or better made; this is accidental. One concept, however, can represent another, as a reflex concept represents a direct one; but they differ in species, since they represent objects differing in species: one represents the external object, the other the concept itself inwardly.

But if you ask how one like thing represents or manifests another like thing, the answer is that it represents the other as a correlative, not as a representative—that is, through the general character by which one relative expresses an order to and includes its correlative, since they are simultaneous in correlative cognition; not through the special character by which one stands representatively in relation to another and exercises the office of presenting other objects to a power.

Finally, from what has been said it becomes clear how sign and image differ. First, not every image is a sign, nor is every sign an image. An image can be of the same nature as that of which it is an image, as the Son is with the Father even in divine things, and yet is not his sign. Many signs are not images either, such as smoke as a sign of fire and a groan as a sign of pain. The character of an image, then, consists in this: that it proceed from another as from a principle and in likeness to it, as St. Thomas teaches in 1. p. q. 35. et q. 93.; thus it is made in imitation of that principle and can be so perfectly like it as to be of the same nature, an image that propagates, not merely represents. It is not of the character of a sign, however, that it proceed from another in likeness to it, but that it be a means leading that thing to a power and stand in its place in representing it, as something less perfect than and dissimilar to it.