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2. All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things
are learnt by means of signs. I now use the word "thing" in a strict
sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything
else: for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that
kind. Not, however, the wood which we read Moses cast into the
bitter waters to make them sweet, nor the stone which Jacob used as a
pillow, nor the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son; for
these, though they are things, are also signs of other things. There
are signs of another kind, those which are never employed except as
signs: for example, words. No one uses words except as signs of
something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs: those
things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else.
Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is
nothing at all. Every thing, however, is not also a sign. And so,
in regard to this distinction between things and signs, I shall, when
I speak of things, speak in such a way that even if some of them may
be used as signs also, that will not interfere with the division of the
subject according to which I am to discuss things first and signs
afterwards. But we must carefully remember that what we have now to
consider about things is what they are in themselves, not what other
things they are signs of.
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