Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“The notion that it is we who attribute significance to objects of experience is, like the declarative sentence, not an originary one. The first significant object, by being designated by a sign, is thereby distinguished from every other object in the universe as something to which we cannot relate through our “instinctive” appetites. We do not need “supernatural” categories to define the sacred; it is thus already defined. The sacred/significant is the originary cultural supplement to what has been revealed as the dangerous inadequacy of our “natural” pre-human restraints. This danger is deferred by the imposition of the sign between us and our “instinctive” nature. The sacred understands itself as a desire that cannot be fulfilled and for that very reason is desire and no longer mere appetite. Unlike the rational uses of language that we falsely think of as fundamental, it is the use of the ostensive sign to designate the originary sacred object that is the founding gesture of language, the stepping-back or deferral of appetitive interest that inaugurates the notion of significance/sacrality, our first idea . This is not to suggest that there is no difference between religious and rational thought. But discussing such differences as though they were grounded in an unchanging cultural ontology is the action of a “historian of ideas,” not a thinker.”

— Eric Gans, Toward a Preface to The New Origin of Language · Saturday, July 15th, 2017 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment