Note 169 — Chapter I · THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Or rather, like all symbols which are not identical with the things they represent. In the latter case, as when, e.g., for any purpose I count the numbers of the natural number series themselves, beginning with 1, there may appear to be complete correspondence. But the usefulness of the process depends on the fact that the 1 which I count and the 1 by which I count it are at least numerically distinct—how much more distinction this implies I do not stay to discuss here—and hence, I take it, it is by an abuse of language that the process is called “representation of a thing by itself.”