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This logical approach “to a philosophy of art” is presented in two parts. The first part consists of three essays in lingual and critical problems in verbal logic, space, time and meaning, and in poetry, wherein he criticizes the position taken by Mr. Russell, and explains mathematics in terms of language. He has here also presented a new series of terms for differentiating and describing the various aspects of aesthetics.
The basis of logic is the “identification of the constituent symbols of any symbolic design. The laws of reasoning thus consist in the translation of symbols as the laws of causation consist in the transformation of objects” … “the logic of a causal relation is simply the order of its symbols.” To the author a science is a way of meaning a certain order of things, which is concerned with the beings that are meant rather than with how they are meant, but “mysticism glorifies the pure symbol, however efficacious distinct symbols have proved to be in dealing with things.” … “The only fault of mysticism is its only virtue—the fact that it is so certain of the unspecifiability of the now by means of distinct symbols, that it is content to remain inarticulate.”
He distinguishes contextual symbols from sign symbols and offers the architect's blueprint of a house as an example of double symbolism. It serves not only as a contextual symbol in relation to the house in its functions of succession, necessity, and identity of meaning, but also as a sign symbol of another context as that of a verbal, visual, or personal house in relation to which it is associational’, substitutional, and contemporary.