Augustine: Earlier Writings
THE TEACHER go two things but thousands of things occur to my mind which can be shown by themselves and without any sign. Why should we doubt it? I need not mention the innumerable spectacles which men exhibit in the theatres, showing them without any sign and just as they are. Think of the sun, the light that suffuses and clothes all things, the moon and the stars, earth and sea, and the innumerable things they bear. Does not God exhibit them in themselves to those who behold them?
33. If we consider this a Httle more closely, perhaps you will find that nothing is learned even by its appropriate sign. If I am given a sign and I do not know the thing of which it is the sign, it can teach me nothing. If I know the thing, what do I learn from the sign? When I read (Dan. 3:27: LXX Dan. 3:94) "Their saraballae were not changed," the word, saraballae, does not indicate what it means. If I am told that some covering of the head is so called, would I know what a head is, or a covering, unless I knew already? Knowledge of such things comes to me not when they are named by others but when I actually see them. When these two syllables first struck my ear, ca-put I was as ignorant of what they meant as I was of the meaning of saraballae. when I first heard or read it. But when the word, caputs was frequently repeated, observing when it was said, I discovered it was the name of a thing well known to me from my having seen it. Before I made that discovery the word was merely a sound to me. It became a sign when I had learned the thing of which it was the sign. And this I had learned not from signs but from seeing the actual object. So the sign is learned from knowing the thing, rather than vice versa.
34. To understand this better, suppose we hear the sound, caput, for the first time, not knowing whether it is merely a sound or whether it has some meaning. We ask what caput is. Remember we want to know not the thing signified but the sign, although we cannot have that knowledge so long as we do not know what it is a sign of. If, then, in answer to our question the thing is pointed out with a finger, we look at it and learn that that was a sign which we had heard but had not known before. In a sign there are two things, sound and meaning. We perceive the sound when it strikes our ear, while the meaning becomes clear when we look at the thing signified. The pointing with the finger can indicate nothing but the object pointed out, and it points not to a sign but to a part of the body which we call caput. In that way, accordingly, I cannot learn the thing, because I knew it already, nor can I learn the sign because it is