Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
The word caenum (filth) for example is, I think, far preferable to the thing it signifies. What offends us when it is mentioned has nothing to do with the sound of the word. Change one letter and caenum becomes caelum (heaven), but what a difference there is between the things signified by these two words!
I should not, therefore, attribute to the sign the quality I loathe in the thing signified. We prefer to hear the word to being brought into contact with the thing with our other senses. Accordingly I prefer the sign to the thing signified. Aug.—You are most observant. It is false, therefore, that things universally are to be preferred to their signs. Ad.—So it seems. Aug.—Tell me, then, what you think people wanted to achieve when they bestowed that name on an object so nasty and revolting. Do you approve of what they did or not? Ad,—I do not venture to approve or to disapprove, nor do I know what they were trying to do. Aug.—But you can know what you intend to do when you mention the word? Ad.—Certainly. I want to give a sign to the man with whom I am speaking, by means of which I may let him know what I think he ought to know. Aug.—The knowledge, then, conveyed by this word from you to him or from him to you, is more valuable than the word itself? Ad.—I agree that the knowledge conveyed by the sign is more important than the sign itself. But this does not mean that the thing signified is better than its sign.
26. Aug.—Therefore, though it is false that things universally are to be preferred to their signs, it is nevertheless true that whatever exists on account of something else is inferior to that on account of which it exists. Knowledge of filth, for example, to convey which knowledge the name was invented, is more important than the name, while the name is also to be preferred to the thing it designates, as we have discovered. The knowledge is superior to the sign simply because it is the end towards which the latter is the means. If some gluttonous man, a worshipper of his belly, as the Apostle says, were to say that he Hved to eat, a temperate man, hearing him, and unable to bear with him, might say: "How much better it would be if you ate to live." This judgment would proceed from the same rule. What displeased him would be that the other valued his life so Httle that he thought less of it than of the pleasures of gluttony, saying that he lived for banqueting. The advice to eat in order to live rather than to five in order to eat, is justly praised simply because it shows understanding of what is means and what is end, that is to say, of what should be subordinate to what. Similarly