There is a conceptual depth as well as a purely visual depth. The first is discovered by science; the second is revealed in art. T...he first aids us in understanding the reasons of things; the second in seeing their forms. In science we try to trace phenomena back to their first causes, and to general laws and principles. In art we are absorbed in their immediate appearance, and we enjoy this appearance to the fullest extent in all its richness and variety. Here we are not concerned with the uniformity of laws but with the multiformity and diversity of intuitions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitio...ns. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some animals, especially domesticated animals, are extremely susceptible to signs. A dog will react to the slightest change in the... behavior of his master; he will even distinguish the expressions of a human face or the modulations of a human voice. But it is far cry from these phenomena to an understanding of symbolic and human speech.... Symbols--in the proper sense of this term--cannot be reduced to mere signals. Signals and symbols belong to two different universes of discourse: a signal is a part of the physical world of being; a symbol is a part of the human world of meaning. Signals are "operators"; symbols are "designators."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »