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The sign K (ξ) denotes a complex idea, or series of ideas, in its most simple and uncomplicated form. Its most extended form suffers from requiring the whole of psychoanalysis, past, present and future, for its expression and elucidation. Its most economical formulation is incomprehensible without experience. In this way it is analogous to mathematical signs such as,
to represent a four-dimensional world of three space coordinates, and a fourth coordinate denoting time.
K represents a constant, or variant. ξ is an unknown component, a variable, an unconscious which remains unconscious, a source of speculation and disturbance. Variables depend on vertices such as religious, aesthetic and scientific, often represented in the world of reality by persons and their points of view.
Perhaps you wonder why I do not say what I mean in a way that you could understand. You may be thinking, on the other hand, “What about it? I know all this already – I can't waste my time on it”. But if we go on together I shall try talking in borrowed fables, verbal formulations of visual images, stories like that of Oedipus, of the Tower of Babel, or the Garden of Eden. All these are reminiscent of ideogrammatic speech. They are open to the objection that they are easy to grasp, being dominated by the ocular senses and distorted accordingly. They are both easily comprehensible and false. This is probably one of the components of Plato's hostility to the poet. I am now using the history of philosophy to tell a story. I can imagine that one of the grievances held against Socrates was that he
was corrupting the youth by mobilizing visual imagery or poetry, both of which are powerfully seductive. Whether it is true I do not know, but it serves my purpose to construct the story as a method of making relatively simple something that I want to convey. I may be able to make it clearer while at the same time being misleading. Alternatively I can resort to something which is so sophisticated that it h