International Catholic University
I've been talking to you about the liberal arts, their history and their philosophy. So far we have seen that the liberal arts should be identified with the arts of learning and especially with the arts of intellectual learning. For that reason they're mainly concerned with signs and symbols by which we communicate with one another. We've looked at the tradition of the liberal arts and antiquity in the Middle Ages and seen that two groups of arts have been distinguished, the linguistic arts of the Trivium, grammar, logic and rhetoric, and the mathematical arts of the Quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, "music" in a special sense, and astronomy.
Since the arts are arts of signs we started to consider the linguistic arts of the Trivium, which meant to begin with an analysis of the sign process itself. There we saw that we had to distinguish three elements in the sign: a sign thing, the material existent that composes the sign whether it's a word, the cloud in the sky, or whatever, which is related to the sign object that the sign presents and presents it in such a way as to evoke a certain response to it. With these three elements of the sign process I am arguing that each of them for their full and good use calls for a special art. Therefore in the last lecture we saw how an art was needed for dealing with the sign things. In order to speak the language, to communicate and accomplish the purposes you want, you have to know the vocabulary of the language. You have to know how the words are put together to form communicative expressions. That's why an art is called for, and it's the art of grammar.
I want to go on to continue further the arts of signs by considering how the arts dealing with the sign object can be identified with the art of logic. Those dealing with the sign use can be identified with the art of rhetoric. In the ordinary functioning of signs no one element remains for long the same. This is true of the sign objects, of the sign things. See already I've used a number of different words -- the sign things, but it's also true of the sign objects. They change as the discourse proceeds, it is only the sign use that seems to remain the same for very long. For instance the sign use right now is my effort to enable you to understand better the liberal arts and how they function in the sign process. However just as the need for grammar is revealed by its lack so the functioning of the sign object is indicated by the lack when it fails to emerge. We can have a sign presented that fails to present the sign object. Consider for example the beginning of Shakespeare's, Twenty-fourth Sonnet. It reads as follows:
Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art.
Now the lines are obscure to us and yet the individual words and their conjunction are still common enough with the possible exception of stell'd. The painter hath stell'd thy beauty's form in table of my heart. However we can look that word up in a Shakespearean glossary and see that it means to delineate. The painter hath delineated thy beauty's form in table of my heart. But this helps very little to clarify the quatrain. The trouble seems to come from not knowing the function and relation of such words as table, frame and perspective. We have to do, it would seem, with an extended metaphor in which the eye, the heart, the body of the poet function in some way as the best painter's art. It is not immediately apparent what that way is. We lack the ground of the metaphor and without it the main point of the lines is lost, or grasped at best only very vaguely.
What is lacking in its fullness is the presence of the sign object. What's he talking about in these lines? We recognize the words organized in a pattern proper to the English language. The sign things are obviously present. We are prepared to read the lines as poetry in part because of the rhythm, rhyme and imagery, which is to say that we know the sign use. If the lines fail to fulfill completely their function as signs, they are making a comparison; that much is clear enough. But it's not clear what the comparison is.
This failure I am claiming is to be attributed to the failure of the sign object to appear, to be presented. Because of the unity of the sign process the failure of this one element also affects the other two. The sign as such fails to function fully but the cause of it insofar as it can be attributed to any one element lies in the sign object; it's failure of the sign object to appear.
The remedy is to be found at trying to locate the object not by a more intensive study of the English language as such, or of poetry. What is needed is knowledge of the Renaissance technique of drawing in perspective. We had in the quatrain the word perspective. Albrecht Durer, the German painter and engraver, made several drawings that illustrate the technique of perspective which make clear at once what Shakespeare is talking about in these lines. They provide the basis for the comparison. In these drawings we can see a painter standing before a frame that holds a gloss, or transparent material, through which he sights a body lying behind it and on which he marks the points which delineate the form of that body. See, he's looking through a frame on which there is a sheet of paper, transparent flat surface, and looking through that he is directing his attention at the body of a man sitting in a chair. Now the body of man of course is three dimensional so through that flat plane the artist indicates by points on the frame, on the picture, the points corresponding to the various points in the seated body. In effect you see, he is transferring a three dimensional figure into a two dimensional frame. In this fashion he is able to obtain a two dimensional perspective picture of the three dimensional body. Why perspective? Because the two dimension, the flat surface, shows a three dimensional body.
The frame, table, stell'd, and form of Shakespeare's lines are terms of the perspective technique which he explicitly names in the fourth line where he says, perspective it is best painter's art. With this it seems to me most of the difficulties of the lines disappear. For them to function fully as signs we need to have knowledge of this perspective technique. We cannot get this knowledge from the signs themselves, since they do not fulfill their function as signs until we know the object that they present.
The footprint that an animal makes is a sign of it. But it does not function as such except in a very general and vague way until we also know the animal that made the footprint. In both cases we need to have knowledge of some thing outside the sign process, in other words factual knowledge of the world. To get such knowledge it is not always necessary to confront the actual thing. We may get it through signs of other things that we already know just as we now got through looking at a picture knowledge about the Renaissance perspective technique. A description will do, as we have seen, and that's a description -- a picture is also a sign.
With this much we are able to know and show that for a sign to present its object it is also necessary to know in some way the external thing which is presented. However not all the relations in which the sign object is involved are to things external to the sign process. We have to go outside the poem to the Renaissance world for this knowledge of perspective. However the object presented is a complex of relations among many objects, and some of these are presented within the sign itself. Some of these appear as we read through the rest of the sonnet.
One of the principle relations that is established is that between a visible form and a human heart lodged within the breast. By a poetical conceit we are asked to imagine that the picture of the beloved is engraved upon the heart of the poet. All of these are objects having relations to external things. The heart, its position within the bodily frame, the beloved, her picture, all matters and knowledge of the world. That the picture is engraved on the poet's heart is another kind of object, one obtained by metaphor. But there is still another kind of relation when the poet goes on to say:
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictur'd lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
The other relations are still present but caught up now in a new one. The poet is now arguing in effect that since the form of his lady is pictured in his heart she must look within his bosom to see her image. He is also saying much more than this. Conceit is piled upon conceit. But he is saying at least this much, and his argument establishes a relation of a different kind from any of the others that we have encountered.
Stated abstractly what is this relation? It is this: if a lady's picture is upon the poet's heart, then she can see her image by looking within his breast. The first cannot be so without the second also being so. In other words what we have here is an implication, that if - then - see, which must also be grasped if the poem is to be understood as a significant structure. It is but one relation among many in the poem, poetically may not be the most important. It is part of the poem as a sign structure, but (what is more important for our concern) it's an example of a relation effect in a sign object that figures largely in many uses of linguistic signs, the if - then implication.
Now we've been introduced to the possibility of logic by the Shakespearean sonnet in which the poet, among other relations, establishes the one that if the lady's picture is upon the poet's heart then she can see her image by looking within his breast. An if - then relation, a typical, logical relation. And yet note this about it: see that the if - then relation isn't about the sign things, it's about the sign objects. The relation holds between the objects. But the peculiar thing about it, this relation is established by the signs themselves. This is evident from the fact that the relation can be abstracted from the objects in which it is involved and considered by itself.
An important part of elementary formal logic is in fact devoted to the analysis of the relation expressed by if p then q. The type of relation exemplified here by if - then is a logical relation. It appears in simple form also with such connectives as and, or, but not and the like which serve to join sentences together. One shorthand version of logic is to say that it's the study of ifs, buts, and nots. Although established and expressed by means of sign things, it concerns not them but sign objects. Thus in analyzing their properties we are not analyzing the properties of any given language as a system of sign things, as we would be for instance in analyzing the sounds and syntax of English. In fact this logical relation can be found in any language that has developed sufficiently to make the distinctions that are necessary for exhibiting it.
It is also a relation that can be established by means of signs alone. The simplest way of manifesting this is to consider the forms of expression used to state a truth. Suppose I make the statement, It is now raining here outside, and give you to understand that I am describing the state of the weather. To verify this statement you have to go outside the statement itself, either to observation or to the word of another. However, if I say Either it is now raining here or it is not raining here, there is no need at all to go outside the statement itself to verify its truth. It is true by virtue of the way it is constructed. It is an exemplification of the logical law of the excluded middle.
This example illustrates what I mean here by relations that are established by means of signs alone and yet are not about signs. The statement is about rain. Either it is raining here or it is not, at a certain place and time. It's not about an instance of English language usage. It concerns the object given in the sign, the rain, neither sign thing or sign use. It expresses a truth, yet it is a truth that derives from the form of its expression and not from the state of affairs.
Study of this formal relation among signs has been carried out most thoroughly on signs used for the expression of truth. Aristotle is the first; he provides the first systematic of formal logic restricting attention to the sentences that are true or false. And modern logic still begins the same way. Yet the formal relation established among the sign objects is common to every use of discursive signs and is not confined merely to the scientific use of discovering and expressing a truth.
Poetry as we have just seen in the instance of the Shakespeare sonnet may exhibit the same form of relation. Although it does not have it all, it has the same kind of truth that a scientific statement does. The construction of such formal relations among objects by means of signs calls for a distinct art, since it deals with objects that are distinct from grammar, which is concerned with the sign things and can achieve at most only expression of significance within a specific linguistic structure. Nor is it equivalent to a knowledge of the things which would appear as objects within the sign, as knowledge of perspective for understanding this experience sonnet. But it is an art of constructing a relation among the objects by means of signs as by means of the if - then construction in our example.
I've constructed what is needed as an art and as a work of signs. It is an art of signs -- in other words a liberal art. This need appears in any discursive use of signs, of course, not only in poetry. It is most evident in the scientific use of language where all but the truth function is reduced to a minimum. The formal truth achievable by means of signs then becomes an object of great importance, second only to the determination of what is in fact the case. But the need for this art is felt whenever the relations among objects presented are exploited by means of the signs themselves. Concerned with the objective element in the sign, it is separable from both the sign thing and the sign use. The force of such a connection as if - then carries across many different languages through many different uses. In fact it is most readily studied by elaborating an artificial language in which everything but the connectives appear so far as possible only as arbitrary symbols. That's why logic and mathematics sometimes is said to be about nothing but about the work of the signs.
The movements of the sign things and their use can be rigorously controlled. Sign things used may be no more than marks with the same general shape, and the use can be held to the exploration of relations resulting from the operation upon these connectives. With such restrictions, the objective relations of the sign can be studied as exhibited in operations with the connectives and the properties of the various kinds of connectives and their laws can be established. But since the product of this art is studied systematically in the science of logic, it is appropriate to call the art itself the liberal art of logic.
As with grammar, the art and science should not be confused. In both cases the art is much more general and is presupposed by the science. It is the art that is in use before the science can ever begin. Sometimes logic in this sense is distinguished from its scientific counterpart, as a natural distinguished from an artificial logic, as though the general art of logic were natural to the intellect in its use of signs. In other words anyone using a language uses the art of logic in the common general sense. You can't argue without using logic. You can't use ands, buts, nots, if - thens without using logic. But the scientific study of them in a course in logic, in a book in logic, that's another matter.
Not everybody by any means wants to study logic as a science, but everybody has to use it as an art. However, it is still something over which we have control, this natural art of logic, this general art of logic -- even such unnatural logic in this sense is artificial, in the sense it produces a construct which is a work of art. Artificial means something made by art. We shouldn't use the word artificial here as meaning something that is superficial. Artificial means it's something made by art. In this case what's made is a pattern of signs. To distinguish the two, the ancient distinction was made between logical use, logica utens, and logical teaching, logica docens.
There is an art of logic found in our use of signs prior to and apart from any scientific analysis of it. It is an art which we can acquire and use with little or no conscious scientific knowledge of it, although any advance in scientific understanding of it may be expected to contribute to the perfecting of the art. The science of logic from Aristotle down to Whitehead and Russell has always been predominantly interested in signs that form an expression that it's true or false. Aiming at science it is thus concerned with the sign for one specific use that, namely of theoretic knowledge, that kind of knowledge that aims at determining the truth about things.
The art of logic, on the other hand, is found at work in any context of sign of sufficient complexity to involve connections among the objects presented in the sign process. These contexts may not concern truth or falsity at all, or if they do they do so in a very different way from that in a scientific discourse. This is apparent in poetry, for example. If we can speak of the truth of the Shakespearean sonnet, it is manifested of a different order from that of science. Yet hereto is present as we have seen a connection among the sign objects which is a work neither of the sign things as such nor of the sign use. Such a logical connection can be found also in a series of commands, as in law where there is a connection in the commands, and even in a set of questions as long as they are organized in such a relation to each other as in the questions of the systematic inquiry.
In general all that is required to ground the need for an art such as I am calling this liberal art of logic is the presence in the sign structure of something more than a pattern of sign things and sign use -- something more than a pattern of things making certain demands, arousing certain expectations which the signs themselves produce as a foreign pattern among the sign objects. With this we have seen the basis for maintaining that the art of logic can be identified with the art of dealing with the sign objects. We have seen that the use of signs demands at least two distinct arts, then: grammar and logic.
Now I want to discuss with you the arts of signs and especially the art of the sign use which establishes the art of rhetoric. The question is whether a third art is necessary corresponding to the sign use, the third element that we distinguished in the sign. That a special one is needed for the sign use becomes clear if we fix the sign thing and object and allow the sign use to vary. Consider the expression, She was wandering in a large forest. You have a set of sign things which form a significant structure in the English language and present us with a certain object, that of a woman wandering in a large forest. Obviously we are already making many assumptions: that the object indicated by the pronoun is a woman, that we know the objects presented as a woman, a forest qualified by large, and the act of wandering.
To make these explicit and exhibit their relations we require a lengthy analysis. Yet in the end of such an analysis it would only provide a more detailed account of what is given as one whole by the expression in which we do grasp as an object. The example thus provides us with an instance in which sign thing and object are fixed.
Now the question can be asked whether anything more than these two is needed for the expression to function as a sign. It is plain, it seems to me, that something more than these two is required. With only this much we do not know how to take the expression as a sign. If we imagine different context for it we will obtain quite different results. As it stands it is taken apart from any context, but before it can function as a sign we have to supply a context. If it occurred within the context of a newspaper account, for example, it would be one sign and quite a different one if it were in a poem or a novel. The context obviously makes a difference to the function of the expression as a sign. In the one case it would be understood as a description of something that actually took place which could be verified and cites experience. The other would make no such demands.
Yet the demand is made as part of the sign, the sign use. Since we are dealing only with spoken linguistic signs there is no other way of knowing the demand except through the sign itself. Yet there is no way of telling from just this expression which demand is made. This is provided only by the context, and we need a context for the expression to function fully as a sign. The context in other words is part of the sign function in that it shows how the expression is to be used as a sign. It provides an indication of that element that I've called a sign use. Historical and poetic context determine different sign uses with the result that a sign which has the same sign things and objects will function differently as a sign of the two cases.
The difference between the historic and poetic use of an expression is sometimes attributed to the different functions of sense and reference. For instance you can show the difference between the expression morning star and evening star by which are two different expressions and yet they both name the same thing, the planet Venus. What is the same is called the reference, what is different is then the sense or meaning of whether Venus is an evening star or a morning star. Applying this distinction to our example it might be claimed that the poetic use of the expression has a meaning but no reference, nothing outside itself existing in the real world -- some actual woman, for example, as being referred to as wandering in a large forest. It would be simpler to take this as the explanation of the difference, but it still will not eliminate the need for the element of the sign use.
Before we can use this distinction we have to know how our expression is being used, whether it is making a historical or poetic assertion. This we can only learn from the context. Once we know this we can apply with sense and reference if we want. But then it's not so much about the sign use as about the relation between the sign object and its real correlative outside the sign: see the planet Venus, for example. Which is only to say there is a difference between historical and poetic signs and what they are about. In other words the distinction between sense and reference cannot replace the need for distinguishing sign use because it properly concerns another element in the sign, namely the sign object. It is the difference in sign use that brings about the difference in the object calling for the distinction.
The larger context is the most important for determining the sign use, but it is not the only one that chose it. Change in the sign thing through inflection, punctuation, provides the simplest indication and example. Consider the three expressions: She was wandering in a large forest. Was she wandering in a large forest? She was wandering in a large forest! Only the slightest changes occurred, a substitution of different punctuation marks, different inflections in the voice, making one an assertion, another a question, another an exclamation. The object remains the same in all three cases, a woman wandering in a large forest. Yet quite different demands are made by the three expressions; they say different things, which is to say that they work as different signs as soon as their full significant inflection is considered. The first makes an assertion either historical or poetic, the second makes a request, a question seeking an answer, and the third exclaims about some wonder. They establish different relations to their reader, actual or potential, and they do so not because of any prerequisite change in the reader outside the sign but because of what they are as signs through the sign use they indicate.
We still remain primarily concerned with the sign use -- not with the sign thing (although this too is now involved in the change of punctuation, or inflection in the case of speaking), not with the relation between sign thing and object and beyond that with its possible correlative in the real world, but with the relation between sign thing, sign object and their use as indicated within the sign itself. We are concerned that is to say with a line that is directed to the user beyond the sign but as present in the sign itself, not in its effect outside the sign upon some actual user of it. Though such an effect occurs when the sign functions, we do not need to go to the user.
By looking at the sign we can see why it should produce the effect that it does. Even where there is only one general sign use, there is still the possibility of achieving different effects. And this is as much the work of the sign use itself as of either sign thing or sign object, although it is of a different order. Take the expression in another language, errabat silva in magna, from the Aeneid (Book 6, line 450) which is the source of our example. Again the object remains the same. Now there is all the difference in sign things between an English and a Latin expression. The applicate words in presenting the object in the Latin line errabat silva in magna -- was wandering forest in large, in English.
These words within the language system to which they belong possess different ranges of association and relation. There is not, for instance, a one-to-one correspondence between all the uses of silva and of forest. Silva has a different range of meanings in Latin than forest does in English. The difference is also in sound and word order. And that's sufficient to show that the two expressions make different connections between sign things and objects and produce different effects.
It would take a long analysis to indicate the source of the difference, but I'm claiming that the difference is felt merely by listening to the two expressions and understanding their function as signs. The difference lies in the effects it is capable of making on the reader. It belongs accordingly to the sign use more than to the sign thing or sign object, although these are now more closely involved than in the previous examples. The magna coming at the end of the Latin expression achieves a prominence that is lost in English, by having to put the large with forest in English. This is due in the first instance to their belonging to different linguistic systems. But we're concerned now with a different effect this is capable of achieving along the line of use.
Achieving the same effect in use is at the heart of the difficulty of translation. The main task in translating lies in organizing the linguistic sounds of one language to produce effects equivalent to those achieved in another. Since use changes with the growth of the language, if for no other reason than that the words of a living language acquire new uses and hence different contexts, the task of the translator is never finished for all time in any one language. In this sense the translator must be even more sensitive if possible to the sign use than to either sign thing or sign object, although these elements are of course caught up and included in the function of the sign as such.
If there are in fact three distinct elements in the sign functioning, each making its own requirements for effective use, we should, as we do, distinguish three arts. And yet often in the history of the theory of signs only two come to be distinguished as necessary, and the third if recognized at all is held to be necessary only for some particular purpose not proper to the sign work as such. The ground for this claim may be seen by looking again at the diagram of the sign. The axis of sign use leads beyond the sign to its user, either speaker or listener. Even when granted that it possesses an objective element in the sign itself, it is still felt to be something that can be omitted or so minimized as to become irrelevant to the analysis of the sign itself. Logicians sometimes draw a distinction between what they call expressive and significant signs to emphasize that signs can be divorced from the function of expressing something about their user and devote it exclusively to presenting the object. In this sense sign things and objects then become all that are necessary for the functioning of a sign. All that is necessary, in other words, is grammar and logic. This claim can be explained, I believe, by the fact that the sign use cannot be taken for granted. But more of this later on.
Evidence has been presented for the existence of a third element for which a distinct art is required, and that is the traditional art of rhetoric. I've just noted that rhetoric is denigrated in the way that logic and grammar are not and that it's often said that rhetoric is of no real use and one can neglect its function. As an introduction to this problem about the denigration of rhetoric it will prove useful to consider the position of a man who appreciated the need for a third art, for rhetoric, who was expert at practicing it, and yet who nevertheless discarded it as nonessential and even dangerous.
Saint Augustine is the man. Trained in the ancient schools of rhetoric, he was one of their most illustrious representatives and held for thirteen years the official chair in that art at Milan. He was the official speaker for the city. He abandoned it on his conversion to Christianity when he tells us in his Confessions that he withdrew the service of his tongue from the mark of loquacity and turned from his profession as from a chair of lies. Yet his activity constantly reveals the influence of those years of linguistic training, and in his work on Christian Doctrine he considers at some length the function of rhetoric in the education of the Christian.
Although Christian Doctrine, De Doctrina Christiana, is a religious and theological work primarily concerned with teaching how to read and teach the Sacred Scriptures, it contains at least the beginning of a general theory of signs, and in this connection the art of rhetoric is considered and analyzed only to be dismissed at the end as separable from the function of the sign as such. For Saint Augustine rhetoric and its perfection, eloquence, belong more properly to expression than to thought.
This distinction, which stems from ancient rhetoric, corresponds to the distinction made between inventio or discovery, and elocutio or expression, but Augustine gives a somewhat different twist or emphasis to that ancient distinction. According to Aristotle, for example, rhetoric possesses its own kind of discovery which differentiates it from other kinds of thought as measured by the degree of certitude that it achieves. Augustine all but denies that rhetoric has anything to do with discovery or thought and hands over this concern to the knowledge proper to the kinds of objects under investigation. In this case for him this is Scriptural theology which subsumes all the sciences as dealing with things that are found mentioned in the sacred text. In effect the distinction between discovery and expression reduces the distinction between things and words, res and verba. Rhetoric is thus looked upon primarily as a matter of words: it's merely a verbal art. Yet it does not apply to every use of words but only to that which aims at producing a certain effect on the audience. The distinction between discovery and expression thus tends to approximate that which Aristotle makes between discourse that is in terms of things, and discourse which is in terms of the hearer.
When Augustine comes to treat the problem of expression in the last of the four books of De Doctrina Christiana, he is concerned entirely with the achievement of an effect upon an audience. A discourse may produce different effects upon an audience. Augustine, following Cicero, reduces these effects to three: to teach, to delight, and to move. All three are assigned to the speaker and orator as his proper concern and hence would seem to belong to rhetoric as the art of oratory. However both teaching and delight are denied to be a work of rhetoric. Delight itself is removed as dangerous and improper as an end in itself, and teaching is given over to knowledge of the truth. Rhetoric is left with nothing more than the function of moving an audience, and there are times when it loses even this. There is no need for rhetoric, Augustine says, when the hearer yields his assent to one who simply teaches or delights. Nor is delight a necessity, for when in the course of speaking the truth is shown which is the function of teaching, it is not eloquence that acts or is intended to make the truth or its expression delightful. But is it a truth manifested that delights by itself because it is true? Rhetoric, in other words, is dispensable: when needed at all, it is needed only to catch a recalcitrant audience so as to show them the truth and persuade them to act upon it.
Now such a view of rhetoric is a common one, and it's still with us. We find it in antiquity just as we find it today. This view identifies rhetoric with the use of signs for a social purpose and particularly for persuasion to action. Rhetoric thus enters into only one of the three effects that a discourse may produce, that of moving an audience, not of delighting nor of teaching. The other two, teaching and delighting, belong not to rhetoric but to logic and grammar.
In other words rhetoric as an art is extrinsic to the sign process as such, since its functioning is required and determined not by the sign itself but by the end for which the sign is used. Among these ends there are some for which rhetoric is not needed at all. Such is the view of Saint Augustine. It's a belittling of the art of rhetoric.
There is much to be said for this view. In common usage rhetoric is often a pejoritive word. Both scientists and poets, the eminent examples respectively of teaching and delighting, often disdain it. Like Augustine they want to be content with things and words. In this desire, however, there is too much of a tendency to identify these two with the elements I've called the sign thing and the sign object and to overlook entirely the function of the sign use. Yet the sign use is no less an element than the other two, and there is as much need for its proper art as there is for the other two.
That there is such a need is indicated by any analysis of the sign that remains faithful to its complexity. It shows up even when analysis is carried out with the purpose of eliminating the art as in Saint Augustine's. Before considering the problem of expression he briefly investigates rhetoric in relation to discovery and the knowledge of things. His justification for such a consideration is that rhetoric is concerned with a truth that does not depend upon human institution.
It is not due to the work of men, he writes, that an expression of kindness conciliates a hearer, that a brief and clear narration easily achieves its purpose with a variety that holds the attention without tedium. He goes on to remark that such observations are true inasmuch as they make something known or believed or move minds to desire or aversion, and these things have been discovered to be so, to be so constituted rather than instituted or made by man to be so.
We know from our own experience that signs can make something to be known or desired or delighted in. The something here is what we have called the sign object. It is presented by means of sounds or letters, which are the sign things, but in addition to these two there is also the production and effect in an organization of a context in which the object is presented as something to be known or desired or delighted in. This element is the sign use. The ancient trilogy serves to distinguish its general kinds. A demand is made by the sign which may be theoretic as directed towards knowledge, practical as aiming at desire and action, or poetic as centering in delight.
This demand finds its ultimate response outside the sign in the listener or the reader. But it first must exist within the sign itself. Each sign must have its own particular interpretability before it gets any interpreter, and to achieve this is as much a work of art as the handling of the sign things or sign objects. It is an art in being constructive, a making, a result of a making, liberal in being significative. And since there is no function sign in which it does not enter, it is an art needed for any and every use of signs. And functioning as such a sign always produces an effect which establishes its object in a certain relation, and the production of this effect requires more than the ability to manage sign things and sign objects. One may know a language and know also what he wants to say and yet fail to achieve his intention. We experience this even in our own private efforts to formulate something to ourselves as well as in our communication with others. What we struggle with at such times is the organizing of sign things and objects into a structure that will produce the effect that we want. This effect may derive ultimately from the purpose we intend outside the sign process, but it must be manifested first within the sign itself.
It is customary, as we have seen, to restrict rhetoric to the use of signs, to the production of a practical and persuasive effect. This is to identify rhetoric by its end, to place it in the line that goes to the user of the sign, the speaker and listener, with emphasis on the effect that's outside the sign itself. For this reason it is well described as a special and extrinsic rhetoric. But the art that we are considering lies in the same semiotic line that is intrinsic to the sign, present in every use of it. For this art it is appropriate to retain the name of rhetoric, but extend it now to mean the general and intrinsic art which takes for its material sign things and objects and organizes them in a context determining a certain use.
In short rhetoric as a liberal art is the art of the sign use. In fact this more general sense is the current one for courses in writing which are concerned not only with ways of influencing their audience to action. Bur with all ways of writing effectively it is also, as we have seen, the main concern of the translator. Indeed it would not be going too far to claim that this art is preeminently the art of translation. If we use it in a general sense and think of translation as consisting in the effort to make known what we want to say and to achieve the kind of effect that we want to achieve, then every use of signs involves the use of rhetoric.