Since resemblance is also evident in corresponding relations on surfaces, schemata and resemblance are continuous. This has the simple but important consequence that those who make faces (for example) in one way may recognize those made by others in other ways; and it also has the important consequence that, as long as images continue to resemble sufficiently within this broad range, they may be subject to arbitrary invention and elaboration, both in their first utterance and in any successive utterance.
Things are made to resemble principally by shape, which adds another fundamentally important dimension to relation. Shape, like resemblance, is always at least implicitly of Moreover, the outlines by which shapes are usually effected tend to have the value of comprehending what they enclose. [Comprebender e meant to 'grasp', 'unite', 'seize', 'include' or 'arrest'.) That is why both recognizable parts and potent materials may be added to specify a real metaphor. Both in different ways make essences and powers present.
4.7 COMPREHENSION AND CONTOUR
The word 'shape' is related to the German schöpfen, 'to draw up', as water is drawn, but also 'to conceive' (as suspicions) and 'to create' in all the grandest senses of that word. In English, the word is ambiguous, in that 'to shape' may mean to form something three-dimensional, but 'shapes' are generally two-dimensional, and the recognizability I have been discussing presupposes relations on a surface. (I will discuss the problem of images on surfaces at the end of this chapter.) Shapes are definite in that they have outlines or edges, but they may also be 'free', when, although they are definite, they do not define anything, that is, do not make anything recognizable. When they do define something, they are said to be o/that thing, the shape of a horse or tree, even of a triangle. Contour is a special case of shape that defines; the word means something like 'turning with', following and respecting the limits or bounds of a given form. To draw a contour is to abstract (from abstrahere, 'to draw' or 'pull from'), but it is also to draw upon a surface. Contours are not only of things, they are also from them and after them. To draw a contour is to 'take a shape' or to draw the contour of a thing as if passing one's hand over a surface in response to variations in the farthest visible surfaces of forms, but it is also to do so at any practicable size, The question of size, and of abstraction from size, is again crucial. In becoming of and from something, the image also enters a place of human use in being identified with a surface, and is abstracted from actual size in the very act of being put to one or another purpose. I have already argued, in Section 3, for the analogy to vision in such abstraction.
As we have just seen, the words 'draw' and 'abstract' are both related to the Latin traho, trahere, 'to pull' or 'to draw'. 'Trace' (as well as 'track') and 'portrait' have a similar ancestry. 'To portray' means something like 'to drag or draw forth', literally to 'take' a likeness. These metaphors all suggest actual grasping, as in fact both 'perception' and 'conception' are emphatic variants of capio, capere, 'to take hold of, 'grasp' or 'seize', and only secondarily refer to the activities of sense and mind. A perceptio may be a harvest, and if 'conception' is the mind's active grasp of form, it is clear why it also refers to biological conception. In all cases, representation is a transfer of some essencedt is more properly