Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/329

 excellently, if only there has been a previous covenant. The power of the human will to make something into a sign here appears in its elementary (socially effective) form. The convention again about the special meaning of words, even of otherwise meaningless words, plays an important part in the social life. Especial occasion for this is afforded by the speedy but expensive communication between remote places; e.g., in the intercourse between England and India there arises a conventional “cable-language,” at first perhaps within a family or a business, so that the syllable “tar” may have the meaning given to it beforehand “I have arrived safely,” or the syllable “ver” the meaning “The price of silver is rising”. It is a short step from this to make such signs as a means of secret, i.e., exclusive, understanding, as opposed to the public common property of the popular language. In this sense there is a much older and larger application of written signs, which get their special value in the same way as the means of secret notifications and communications. But all such systems of private signs, like writing itself, presuppose an existing language, and refer to it, so that they represent signs of signs; in abbreviated writing, such as stenography, they are as it were signs to the third power. The sign-quality of the original sign may be completely forgotten, and is generally forgotten; indeed it may be stated as a rule that in so far as they are accredited through a natural social will, they have never been in clear consciousness as willed signs. This is quite clear when they are felt as, indeed taken to be, natural signs; to which individual as well as social habituation conduces. On the other hand, it belongs to the nature of the derivative signs here under consideration to be thought and willed as signs, hence as means for common ends, by those who give them their meaning. Others indeed, who have not been active in this direction, may accede to the content of such a convention; they then take it into their will without needing to reflect upon the nature and origin of the signs, which may therefore become as natural to them as the “mother-tongue,” and the habitual forms of intercourse. But not even origin is decisive for the conventional character of signs and sign-systems. Whatever their origin, signs may become conventional, through the fact that they are felt, thought, applied as such, i.e., essentially as external means. This is clear in the forms of intercourse themselves. We may maintain a naive and credulous attitude towards them, taking assurances of esteem, reverence, sympathy, as sterling coin, and returning them only when we can utter them with “a good conscience,”