Chapter 102
Signs, symbols, allegory and meaning; how words and things signify.
355 passages · 115 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Every book in this collection is made of signs, and many of them are about signs as well. The idea of sign and symbol covers whatever stands for something other than itself. It includes the smoke that betokens fire and the word that betokens a thought. It reaches to the scar that proves a man’s identity and the eagle that foretells a vengeance, and to the parable that hides a doctrine and the sacrament that shows forth an invisible grace. Augustine states the root of the matter early in his Confessions: words, and the motions of the body, are signs both of things and of the affections of the mind1. Hobbes gives the plainest general account, defining a sign as the antecedent event of a consequent, more certain the oftener the sequence has been observed2. Between these two definitions, one grounded in meaning and the other in inference, lies much of the territory the authors explore. The idea is great for these books because it touches knowing, speaking, worship and art at once. Every question about how the visible discloses the invisible is in part a question about signs.
The Hobbesian sense, in which a sign is an indication from which something further is inferred, is everywhere in practice. Cervantes lets a dead mule and an abandoned valise tell the story of a vanished owner3. Manzoni’s corpses drawn through the streets are a token of pestilence that speaks to the eye4. Taine extends the notion to culture: a literary work signifies a state of intellect as a fossil shell reveals the animal5. Such signs rest on nature. Others rest on agreement, and the authors largely concur that words belong to this second class. Augustine notes that the letters of a name are settled by convention among men6. Burke holds that sounds stand for realities by custom and not by resemblance7. Hobbes builds a political science on voluntary signs, by which rights are transferred and contracts made, whether by express words or by inferred signs such as silence and action8,9. Honour itself, for him, is conveyed by conventional marks of esteem10. Berkeley’s picture of Caesar keeps alive the older thought that a sign may represent by likeness11. Wordsworth shows even the conventional to be historical, since metre is a symbol whose expectations differ in each era12.
On words as signs of ideas the moderns follow a road Augustine had opened. Augustine observes that names such as “health” or “pain” are understood only because the thing signified is retained in memory13. Hobbes makes names first marks for memory and then signs when used in common to express conceptions and passions14. Johnson, labouring at his dictionary, concedes that words are but signs of ideas and wishes they were as permanent as the things they denote15. Burke adds that words, by use, come to affect us as the things themselves would16. Berkeley notes that letters seen by the eye suggest notions, such as God, virtue and truth, that are not themselves sensible17. Paul had put the condition simply: no voice is without signification, but its meaning must be known to be understood18. How such signs first arose is a harder question. Descartes observes that deaf and dumb men spontaneously invent signs to express their thoughts19. Rousseau, though he sees articulate voice replacing gesture by common consent20, confesses that the origin of arbitrary signs is the great difficulty in explaining language21. Darwin speculates that savage dances first represented wars and victories22.
Literal words do not reach everything, and several authors hold that the invisible can be spoken of only in figures, as Carlyle says outright23. Dante explains that Scripture gives God hands and feet to suit human senses24. The striking modern instance is Darwin. His science is full of figures: the tree of affinities25, the geological record as a book in a changing dialect26, and rudimentary organs as silent letters that betray a word’s derivation27. Yet he expects the naturalists’ terms of relationship to cease being metaphors and take a plain signification28. Huxley, more cautious, admits that scientific interpretations of nature remain imperfect and symbolic29. Figure has its dangers too, and Johnson faults a broken metaphor in which the Muse is both horse and boat30.
Among persons, the most trusted signs are often not words. Hobbes, having called speech an arbitrary signification of passion, judges that the best signs are countenance, bodily motion and action31. Stevenson argues at length that looks, tears and inflections are quicker and more truthful than speech, and that those who lack or falsify them are cut off from their fellows32,33. Lovers in the Arabian tales converse by eyebrows alone34. Bacon notes men who seem wise by gestures35, and Darwin finds a chief’s face to match his character36. Yet seeming can part from being. Hamlet calls his black cloak and tears mere trappings and suits of woe37. Dante clothes his hypocrites in gilded lead38. Don Quixote is a comedy of misread signs: an inn read as a castle, a basin as a helmet, bondage as enchantment39,40,41.
Tokens of recognition supply a counterweight, for they are signs that cannot easily lie. Odysseus is known by his boar-scar42,43, and finally by the secret of the bed built round the olive trunk44. Electra reads a lock of hair and matching footprints as plain signs of Orestes45,46. The Grimms’ heroine is identified by the ring and reel in the soup47, and a royal seal commands obedience in the ballads48. Arranged signals carry messages at a distance or in secret. Aeschylus’s beacon chain bears the fall of Troy to Argos49. Gilbert’s fleet orders prescribe lights, sails and gunshots50. Cervantes’s captives puzzle over a cane, a knotted cloth and a little cross51. A chalk mark, however, can be defeated by duplication52,53. Some written signs are held to carry power beyond meaning. Brynhild teaches runes cut for war and healing54. Suleyman’s engraved names let a man walk unwetted in the sea55. Malory’s sword bears letters declaring the worthiness required56. The power of such signs is fragile, for altered runes become a deceit that Kostbera must see through57,58. In Jonson the “hieroglyphic” a swindler devises from a shopkeeper’s name is pure fraud59.
With omens the controversy becomes explicit. Homer’s eagle seizing the goose signifies Odysseus’s vengeance60, and Virgil’s doves and eagle guide and encourage61,62. Epictetus, a philosopher, still allows that a raven’s croak is a sign sent by God63. Chaucer’s poem debates whether dreams foretell64, and seamen read the corposant as a warning of tempest65. The Buddhist writings multiply presages, blossoming plants and quaking worlds, as tokens of a coming Buddha66,67. Against this stands Plutarch’s Pericles, who shows a frightened steersman with his cloak that an eclipse is no omen68. Plutarch himself, however, thinks prodigies may have natural causes and still signify something else69. Milton’s Christ scorns Satan’s terrors as false portents not sent from God70. Scripture complicates the matter by both granting and refusing signs. An evil generation seeks a sign and receives only Jonah’s71,72, while Moses’s rod and white hand serve as signs of mission73. Pascal distinguishes those who seek signs with evil intent from those who believe the works74. He adds Augustine’s thought that only those benefited by miracles truly see them75.
A larger claim is that nature itself is a language. Drummond calls the world a book whose pages signify its maker, though men look only at the marginal pictures76. Browne sees God’s finger inscribing on every creature a word that expresses its nature77,78. Pascal agrees that creation’s images are sacred characters, legible only by supernatural light79. The romantics secularize or broaden the doctrine. Goethe’s Faust gazes on pure symbols of nature’s energy80. Coleridge holds that nature discourses by symbols which the artist must render81. Emerson makes it a whole philosophy: nature is a symbol in whole and in every part82, the world a temple covered with emblems83, and natural facts the nouns of an eternal language84. Men use symbols economically and forget they are thoughts, and it is the poet who perceives them as such85,86. Thoreau finds his actual walk symbolical of an interior path87.
Made emblems are humbler and more public. Merlin’s Round Table signifies the roundness of the world88. Marlowe’s barons blazon their hatred in heraldic devices89. Donne turns the cross on his seal into an anchor of hope90,91. Flowers acquire fixed values, as in Burns’s posie92 and the grieving boy’s arrangement in Philaster93, and Milton’s rainbow is set as a reminder of the covenant94. Emblems prove unstable, however. Schiller’s cap, imposed as a sign of Austrian power, becomes an emblem of freedom95,96. Egmont’s jesting liveries are misread as dangerous97. Burke observes that paper money means prosperity in England and want in France98, and Renan finds the same Grail objects meaning different things in Welsh and French versions99. Emerson draws the lesson that symbols are fluxional and that mysticism errs by taking an individual symbol for a universal one100. Ruskin warns that men mistake the form of the Word for its power101. The Psalmist had long since mocked idols whose mouths speak not102.
Allegory is the sign extended into narrative, and its defence is a recurring theme. Jesus speaks in parables whose meaning is hidden from outsiders and explained to disciples103. Dante bids his reader mark the doctrine hidden beneath strange verse104. Spenser unfolds his “darke conceit” so that it will not be misconstrued105. Sidney holds poetic fictions to be allegorical pictures of what should be106, and Montaigne finds many senses in Aesop107. Bunyan is the most insistent. Scripture’s own types justify his method108, and dark similitudes stick faster in heart and head than plain statement109. He asks the reader to look past the outside of his dream110. Lessing gives the defence a historical turn: abstract truths were once clothed in allegory, as with the Forbidden Tree and Babel, for a race not yet ready for them111.
Allegory often supplies its own exegete. Malory’s hermits decode the Castle of Maidens as souls in prison112, the barren fig tree as Launcelot’s fruitlessness113, and the white hart as the risen Christ114. Bunyan’s Interpreter expounds pictures and rooms to the pilgrims115,116, and Addison’s genius explains the bridge of human life117. Dante’s visions personify vice and virtue in the beasts that block the ascent118 and in the nymphs of the procession119. They figure the corrupted Church as a harlot upon the car120. Political allegory is older than any of these, as in Menenius’s fable of the belly121 and Catiline’s covert image of headless and lean bodies122. In the arts, Cellini expounds his own statues and medals123,124. Bacon reads a myth as a secret of empire125. Hobbes, more sceptically, sees the gods as personified passions126. Jonson’s alchemists parody the whole enterprise by defending their obscurity as mystic symbol, like Egyptian writing and Scripture’s parables127.
The most rigorous theory of figure in these volumes is Pascal’s. Augustine had been freed from the letter of the Old Testament when Ambrose drew aside its veil, applying the saying that “The letter \illeth”128,129. Paul had made Moses’s veil itself a figure130. Pascal argues that all happened in types131. Where God’s word is literally false it is spiritually true132, and the Synagogue was a figure that endured until the truth came133. Joseph, sold by his brethren and placed between two criminals, prefigures Christ134,135. Thomas à Kempis likewise sees the old sacrifices fulfilled in Christ’s body136. What distinguishes Pascal is his criteria. A text that claims to be veiled yet contains obvious contradictions is a cipher137, and Christ and the Apostles supply its key138. Law and sacrifice are both pleasing and displeasing to God in Scripture, and so must be types139. He also rejects far-fetched readings and fanciful letter-mysticism140,141.
Sacraments carry the sign into worship. The bread and cup stand for body and blood142. Pascal holds that God represents the invisible in the visible, and that nature is an image of grace143,144. Even the Church’s signs are disguised so that only sincere seekers perceive them145. Hume, from a different standpoint, notes that sensible images convey devotion by resemblance146. Yet the authors warn that the sign may eclipse what it signifies. Thomas à Kempis rebukes devotion carried only in outward figures147,148, and Epictetus says that symbols do not make a philosopher149. Pascal turns the danger into design: God foretold in figures so that lovers of symbols and lovers of the thing symbolized might each find their meaning150. On this reading the Jews loved the shadows too well to recognize the reality151. Wordsworth, for his part, judges the mind unable to bear religious things without resting on words and symbols152.
The questions remain open. Do signs signify by nature or by convention? Do portents speak, or only inform? Is the world a text, as Browne and Emerson believe, or does it only resemble one, as Darwin’s tempered metaphors suggest? The authors largely agree that every sign must be read, and that reading requires a key, whether a hermit, an Interpreter or the Apostles. They part on whether that key lies in nature, in convention, or in revelation.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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