relationships which organize their particular structures can in turn be understood.
In order to clarify the sense of meaningfulness we shall proceed by way of a brief characterization of sign and indication. For this purpose we have chosen an example which we shall meet again with some modifications in the discussion of another phenomenon, that of place and direction.
Signs are encountered environmentally; signs are environmental things. The latest automobiles have a rotating red arrow. At an intersection, the particular position of the arrow indicates the direction which the car will take. Its concern is to direct the other party to get out of the way in time. The arrow is a sign indicating the direction by its position. The position of the arrow is controlled by the driver and is thus a constantly handy environmental thing used in driving. Earlier, the driver's hand had the same function, whenever he stretched it out of the car in one or the other direction.
The arrow is now encountered in the character of reference like any environmental thing; it is present in this specific environmental 'in order to,' in a particular serviceability-for indicating. This referential structure 'for indicating,' this particular serviceability in the mode of handiness as a structure of the presence {Anwesenheit} of the sign as utensil, that is, as 'indicator,' this structure of 'in order to indicate' is not the indicating itself. This reference of 'in order to' as mode of handiness, presence {Anwesenheit}, cannot be identified with the indicating; rather, this ontic indicating is grounded in the structure of reference. The specific reference of serviceability 'in order to indicate' is constitutive for the potential environmental handiness of the arrow. The reference is not the indicating itself, the latter is rather that to which the reference refers, in which reference the arrow is encountered as sign and indicating. Just as a hammer is for hammering, so a sign is for indicating. But this reference of serviceability in the structure of the environmental thing hammer does not make the hammer into a sign. In the use of a hammer, concern is absorbed in this 'in order to,' 'for hammering,' just as sign usage is absorbed in its corresponding serviceability, in indicating with it.
But what is of concern in using a sign is now just the indicating, more accurately put, being a signal, that the direction be indicated. The sign gives the direction. Strictly conceived, the perception of the sign, taking something encountered for a sign is not an identification (in our case of this arrow, it is not an identification of the direction); rather, in perceiving this sign, insofar as I encounter it environmentally, I draw from its indication my particular comportment at the time. I draw from the sign the manner in which I go and indeed have to go my own way. Primarily, the sign conveys no information but