Just the other day I went looking for seven. I began by thinking that I could find it with just what was in my hands: Holding up seven fingers, counting to be sure, I marveled at the simplicity of my discovery. But soon I became troubled. This wasn’t what I was searching for at all. This was seven fingers. I was looking at fingers, not seven.

Quickly I extracted from a drawer and arranged before me seven forks; this proved no better. Instead of fingers, now I was looking at forks. How was I closer? Where was seven hiding? This was tougher that I expected.

Wanting to see seven without looking at fingers or forks, I reached for paper and pencil and sketched a very large 7. Despite my hopes, I still hadn’t found seven. Although the numeral 7 wasn’t seven of something, which could be seen or touched, it was only a symbol representing seven. Since a symbol isn’t the thing it represents (or it wouldn’t be a symbol), I knew I had to look elsewhere. Where was seven to be found?

With a touch of despair, I wondered if maybe there simply wasn’t any such animal and my search for it hopeless. Maybe seven didn’t exist, and I so much the fool chasing after it.

No, that couldn’t be, for I saw seven dwelling in too many places, in fingers and forks, for example. But suppose I had made it up, created this thing called seven with my mind, invented a phantasm and gave it the name seven, a phantasm I kept around because it pleased me. No, this wasn’t an answer, this was short-circuiting the difficulty, dismissing the problem by saying it didn’t exist.

What if I was closer to the goal than I knew when I drew that numeral 7? Since the symbol for seven doesn’t need fingers or forks to dwell in, I was stripping off those things that hid the essence of what I was seeking. If the essence of a thing can be hidden by appearance, then it isn’t the eyes which will prove useful in seeing it.

“That’s what you think!” We’ve either heard or said this phrase at some point in our lives. But if someone were to say, “It is raining out,” and if looking outside we saw rain, would we likely retort, “That’s what you think!”?

Although what one says is a measure of his thought, we don’t employ this phrase in plain meaning or to congratulate someone on articulating his thought well; instead, we use it disparagingly. We employ it when we wish to imply that what someone thinks isn’t what is, that what he thinks exists only in a subjective manner, only within him; that he lacks objectivity, that what he thinks is but errant thought, that his thinking isn't reflective of reality. We are saying that someone is deluded; we are saying that he is wrong.

Perhaps you are thinking, “Wait, aren’t all my thoughts by nature subjective since they occur only within me?” So true! for your thoughts are not my thoughts; my thoughts, not yours. That we all are possessed of such subjectivity, objectively is true, barring this big exception: having read what I have written and understanding it, haven’t my thoughts become yours; yours, mine?

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

- Aristotle, De Interpretatione

What would bring someone to read this? Why should someone spend his time plowing through some text? Before someone’s eyes pass over these words, prior to the effort necessary for comprehension, of turning squiggles into symbols, is the consent of the will to the act. No one will seek what he doesn’t wish to find. No one will come here and read unless he is already possessed of some inclination to do so.

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Our age is inarguably a scientific one, marked by an unparalleled degree of technological achievement. When speaking this way, scientifically, a man can recite more facts about more things than anyone ever could. See that shining dot about the horizon just before dawn? That is Venus, the second planet from the sun; its equatorial diameter is 7521 miles; it is 67.2 million miles from the sun; its period of revolution is 224.68 days. That red dot over there? It is Mars, the fourth planet; it has a diameter of 4222 miles and orbits at 141.6 million miles every 686.95 days.

But in this flurry of fact, something has been lost: meaning.

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