Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

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.