hand which one did not know "what to do with" up to now, which accordingly veiled itself to circumspection. Here again, one must also not interpret the character of useful things at hand which have not been discovered by circumspection as mere thingliness presented for the comprehension of something merely objectively present.
The being-handy [Zuhandensein] of signs in everyday dealings, and the conspicuousness which belongs to signs and can be produced with varying intentions and in different ways, do not only document the inconspicuousness constitutive for what is at hand nearest to us; the sign itself takes its conspicuousness from the inconspicuousness of the totality of useful things at hand in everydayness as a "matter of course," for example, the well-known "string on one's finger" as a reminder. What it is supposed to indicate is always something to be taken care of within the purview of everydayness. This sign can indicate many things of the most diverse sort. The narrowness of intelligibility and use corresponds to the breadth of what can be indicated in such signs. Not only is it mostly at hand as a sign only for the person who "establishes" it, it can become inaccessible to that same person so that a second sign is necessary for the possible circumspect applicability of the first one. The string which cannot be used as a sign does not thus lose its sign character, but rather acquires the disturbing obtrusiveness of something near at hand.
One could be tempted to illustrate the distinctive role of signs in everyday heedfulness for the understanding of the world itself by citing the extensive use of "signs," such as fetishism and magic, in primitive Dasein. Certainly the establishment of signs that underlies such use of signs does not come about with theoretical intent and by way of theoretical speculation. The use of signs remains completely within an "immediate" being-in-the-world. But when one looks more closely, it becomes clear that the interpretation of fetishism and magic under [82] the guideline of the idea of signs is not sufficient at all to comprehend the kind of "handiness" of beings encountered in the primitive world. With regard to the phenomenon of signs, we might give the following interpretation: for primitive people the sign coincides with what it indicates. The sign itself can represent what it indicates not only in the sense of replacing it, but in such a way that the sign itself always is what is indicated. This remarkable coincidence of the sign with what is indicated does not, however, mean that the sign-thing has already undergone a certain "objectification," that it has been experienced as a mere thing and been transposed together with what is signified to the same region of being of objective presence. The "coincidence" is not an identification of hitherto isolated things, but rather the sign has not yet become free from that for which it is a sign. This kind of use of signs is still completely absorbed in the being of what is indicated so that a sign as such cannot be detached at all. The coincidence is not based