Pagina 57 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THF. IMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 57
It may well be argued that while this is true of imitations, it does not
hold for similarity, which may look to be a more promising form of nat­
urai relation. But, again, there is no reason why one thing should be tak­
en to signify another simply because there is some resemblance between
them. All things within a given category resemble others in that catego-
ry in all sorts of ways without their being taken, simply because of their
resemblance, to signify one another. In short, resemblance does not en-
tail signification. The relationship of signifying can, of course, be given
to particular kinds of resemblance, but the conferring of this relation­
ship involves something over and above the mere fact of there being a
resemblance between the two things. Signification is, in fact, a cognitive
relationship, one that requires an intensional activity. Accordingly, it can­
not be reduced to a merely naturai relationship, although, of course, as
mentioned above, naturai relations can be given the cognitive property
of signification. But this is quite different from taking the naturai rela­
tionship, any naturai relationship, as being, simply in virtue of whatever
character it has as a naturai relationship, essentially representational.
The conclusion of this line of argument is that there cannot be a nat­
urai language if, by this, is meant a language that can function solely on
the basis of naturai relations115. While Vico was quite correct in under­
standing that ideas and language mutually require each other, he was
wrong in thinking that the requirement could be satisfied by a naturai
rather than a cognitive relationship between them116. In calling this a
‘cognitive’ relationship, I mean no more than that it is a relationship that
can obtain only in relation to the concepts of truth and falsity. But these,
as I argued earlier, cannot arise in the world of poetic man as it is de-
scribed.
If this is correct, and Vico is unable to show how imaginative univer­
sals can retain their identity of predicability while being grasped through
115 This does not mean, of course, that language cannot arise naturaUy, i. e. without pre-
supposing some prior language. But it must do so on the basis of the constraints imposed on
us by a cognitive interaction with the naturai world in which we live, understood for what it
is, and not as some other thing.
116Although, as I have argued, Vico’s account of poetry as the basis of this language must
be wrong, this does not mean that the account that he gives of the various tropes involved in
the development of language is wrong but that these poetic devices can operate only to bring
about changes in a language in which identity of meaning already exists. Though they cannot
themselves account for that identity, it does not follow that they cannot be involved in the his­
torica! changes and extensions in the meanings of words, although these changed meanings
must also be appropriate to other changes in the societies and cultures in which they inhere.
Since they presuppose thè identity of meaning that poetry cannot secure, I have omitted them
from the above discussion.