Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/308

 organic beings, and that for sensuously perceptive subjects this sympathy takes place in one undivided act with sensuous perceptions (in “intuition”). In such cases—e.g., when through the cry of the young sympathy with its hunger enters into the mother animal—we can say: the cry is the sign of the feeling of hunger which is identical with it; and if we divide that undivided act into the two: perception (of the sound, i.e., of a movement) and sympathy (a sensation), then the invariable and immediate sequence is self-evident, i.e. it is explicable by the identity. But in proportion as the activities of knowledge separate themselves from the total mass of experiences, i.e., of psychical facts, it becomes obvious that expressive movements become signs of the sensations (which are fundamentally identical with them), i.e., according to our definition, the perception or recollection of such organic external movements has for invariable and immediate consequence sympathy, i.e., recollection of a sensation.

2. But from sympathy arises subsequent feeling, and ultimately the inference, which is obtained discursively and therefore the more exposed to error. The inference from the expressive movement to the “will” remains nearer to intuition in proportion as the two are unambiguously connected with each other, and that is more emphatically the case the less a specifically human “rational” will is present or developed, so that what may be objectively comprehended as sign may be forthwith actually and subjectively received as the thing itself by the recipient (person understanding), or at least as a combination of both the thing and its sign. So the despot receives and understands prostration both as the actual submission demanded and as its sign. In this and similar cases we may see how the sign arises out of the thing itself, or at any rate separates itself from it, i.e., the mere sign which is no longer also the thing itself, although its connexion with the thing itself was originally the chief element in it. The slaying of the victim is originally intended quite straightforwardly as nourishment for the departed spirits, while at the same time it is meant as a sign to them of the mindfulness, fear and piety of their relations. Gradually it becomes a mere sign of these feelings, even for those who make sacrifice; the end becomes means and the means becomes more and more independent of the end, i.e., more and more distinct from it.

3. Thus it is that, in general, organic external movement becomes for perceiving subjects the sign of sensation and feeling. And since natural thought is metaphorical, that