< previous page page_92 next page >

Page 92
rather than a naming and exact classification of each of them. These semantic units can be organized under six main headings:
Yes vs. No
Edible vs. Inedible
(Where Edible stands for «to be eaten» «comestible», «I want to eat», and so on.)
Good vs. Bad
(This antithesis covers both moral and physical experiences.)
Beautiful vs. Ugly
(This antithesis covers every degree of pleasure, amusement, desirability.)
Red vs. Blue
(This antithesis covers the whole gamut of chromatic experience: the ground is perceived as red and the sky as blue, meat is red and stones are blue, and so on.)
Serpent vs. Apple
(This is the only antithesis which denotes objects rather than qualities of objects or responses to them. We must take note that, while all other objects are ready to hand, these latter two emerge exceptionally on account of their alien character; indeed, we can acknowledge that these two cultural units are incorporated in the code only after a factual judgment issued by God about the nontouchable status of the apple. So when the serpent appears round the tree on which the apple is hanging, the animal is somehow registered as complementary to the fruit and becomes a specific cultural unit, whereas all other animals are perceived as 'edible' or 'bad' or 'blue' or even 'red', without the intervention of further specifications from the global continuum of perception.)

Obviously, one cultural unit inevitably leads to another, and this sets up a series of connotative chains:
(1)
Red
= Edible
= Good
= Beautiful
Blue
= Inedible
= Bad
= Ugly

Nevertheless, Adam and Eve are unable to designate, hence conceive of, these units unless they route them by way of significant forms. This is why they are provided with (or perhaps acquire by slow stages) an extremely elementary language which is adequate to express these concepts.

 
< previous page page_92 next page >