THE NATURE OF SYMBOLS 63 



signify the general notion of peace, and the arrow on a 

 weather-vane may signify north. 



SYMBOL SITUATIONS 



Within this general type of sign situation there are certain 

 specific types, of peculiar importance to man, which may be 

 called symbol situations. Ogden and Richards suggest that 

 these situations should be characterized as those in which 

 men use the signs as instruments of communication. Symbols 

 may then be specified as those signs which are words, images, 

 gestures, drawings, mimetic sounds. Such symbols are used by 

 men to produce certain responses in other men. The interpre- 

 tative act, as a result, becomes limited to the higher organisms, 

 and is commonly understood in terms of such psychological 

 notions as association, apperception, suggestion, and intension. 



Rut symbol situations may be primarily emotive or pri- 

 marily cognitive. This distinction is based upon the two 

 important functions of symbols. Symbols are instruments 

 for the conveyance of feelings and attitudes, and they are 

 instruments for the conveyance of information. The former 

 may be called the emotive function of symbols, and the 

 latter may be described as the cognitive function. Probably 

 all symbols have both emotive and cognitive properties. 

 Rut some symbols are primarily emotive and others are 

 primarily cognitive. Many words call up pleasant or un- 

 pleasant sensations more directly than they call up ideas. 

 Political speeches and patriotic orations in oral discourse, 

 and poetry in the written form abound in emotive appeals. 

 Abstract science, on the other hand, especially mathematics, 

 is constituted primarily by cognitive symbols; the function 

 of such symbols is to say something and not to create feelings. 



Since emotive symbols play a minor role in science they 

 may be neglected for the purposes of this study. Henceforth 

 by "symbol situation" will be meant "cognitive symbol 

 situation," and symbols will be presumed to be significant 

 in a purely cognitive way. One should be able to discover in 

 any symbol, then, (1) the event itself, which is the point to 



