Sign and Symbol

Names are neither arbitrary nor perfectly natural: the question is whether language can reach the nature of things.

Words are conventional symbols of mental experiences, which are themselves natural likenesses of things.

Signs are things that make us think of something beyond themselves; some are natural, some are conventional, and Scripture requires special hermeneutics.

Words signify things through the mediation of concepts; the names of God are analogical, neither univocal nor equivocal.

Words are arbitrary marks for recording and communicating thought; truth is a property of speech, not of things.

Words are signs of ideas in the mind; their meaning is the idea the speaker associates with them, not some essence in things.

There are no abstract general ideas behind general words; a particular idea becomes general by being made to represent all of its kind.

Symbols present concepts indirectly through analogy; aesthetic ideas in art symbolize what no concept can fully express.

Dreams, slips, and symptoms are symbols of unconscious wishes; the mind speaks in a language it does not consciously understand.