Symbol does not only refer; it acts. There is no such thing as a mere symbol. When you climb to the higher levels of abstraction, symbols, those enormous, translucent planets, are all there is. They are at once your only tools of knowledge and that knowledge's only object. It is no leap to say that space-time is itself a symbol. If the material world is a symbol, it is the symbol of mind, or of God. Which is more or less meaningless - as you choose. But it is not mere. In the last analysis, symbol and art objects do not stand for things; they manifest them, in their fullness. You begin by using symbols, and end by contemplating them.