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φαν12

the characters that they signify, that is, that they are
intended, or virtually profess to be intended, to excite in the interpreter of
them,— and therefore do excite in the correct interpreter; nor are they
symptoms or subjects or vehicles, of symptoms, as that goodman and housewife who alternately
come forth from and retire into their hygroscopic cottage, are subjects of behaviour
which is symptomatic of moisture or dryness, being brute effects of the events they
signalize. No, thought-signs belong to that class of signs which the prince
of logicians has
termed symbols; namely, these signs which are made to be
signs, and to be precisely the signs that they are, neither by
possessing any decisive qualities nor by
embodying effects of any special causation, but merely by the certainty