Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/On Christian Doctrine/Book I/Chapter 2

Chapter 2.—What a Thing Is, and What A Sign.

2.&#160; All instruction is either about things or about signs; but things are learnt by means of signs.&#160; I now use the word “thing” in a strict sense, to signify that which is never employed as a sign of anything else:&#160; for example, wood, stone, cattle, and other things of that kind.&#160; 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.&#160; There are signs of another kind, those which are never employed except as signs:&#160; for example, words.&#160; No one uses words except as signs of something else; and hence may be understood what I call signs:&#160; those things, to wit, which are used to indicate something else.&#160; Accordingly, every sign is also a thing; for what is not a thing is nothing at all.&#160; Every thing, however, is not also a sign.&#160; 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.&#160; 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.