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The growth of mystery is correlated to the presence of the archetypes that can never be exhausted by human apprehension. There is a sense in which any sign will have some properties that do not admit of dissolution by inquiry. Yet the deeper sense of mystery is preserved by the archetypes that are filled with a hunger for enhanced thirdness. The encounter with an archetype is always filled with awe and a kind of ontological shock. One of the most dramatic manifestations of the ontological difference is through an archetype that participates in both ‘halves’ of nature. The manifest content of the archetype represents an increment of power and meaning for the sign-using organism, while the hidden content points toward the ultimate mystery of the ontological difference itself. The depth rhythms of nature naturing can never become a thematic sphere of meaning for semiotic theory, any more than they can become transparent and fully available to the human process. Nature’s self-revelatory potential, if such an anthropomorphic conception can be allowed, is manifest in the archetypes that refuse to be confined to either primal dimension of nature (p. 195). |
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