This is especially true of emblems, flags, or conventionalized drawings. It functions as a rallying point for meaning, representing what is complex in a simple way. Save for mathematical symbols, which some authors call signs, the typical symbol provides inspiration rather than notification. Their role is practical and instrumental (see sign). Signs (dinner bell, traffic light, smoke) announce some fact or give notification. It is sufficient if the symbol suggests or is associated with its meaning. Images (pictures, statues, photos, etc.) imitate what they represent, whereas symbols need not resemble what they symbolize. Perhaps the best way to define the symbol is to contrast it with other representative forms that, like the symbol, stand for or point to something beyond themselves: While most of the contemporary uses of the word reflect the original idea of a comparison or juxtaposition of two things, the variety of symbols is so great that it is almost impossible to provide a definition that will satisfy every instance. More recently, the study of the various beliefs and doctrinal tenets of the different Christian denominations has given rise, among Protestants, to a branch of theology known as comparative symbolics. In the patristic era the liturgical creeds pronounced by candidates at the time of Baptism were called symbols, probably because they were collections of dogmatic statements "brought together" as succinct expressions of basic Christian truths (see creed). The fundamental conception always includes a movement from the material symbol to something in a spiritual or suprasensible order. Throughout the medieval period symbolism plays an important role not only in architecture, heraldry and art but also in military and mercantile enterprises. 2.1.941 The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 11:204a). Thus, hugh of saint-victor describes the symbolic process as "a comparison of the visible forms for the showing forth of the invisible" ( In hierarch. The abstract and more general use of the term still retains this notion of one thing (usually material and visible) calling forth its complement or better half (usually something that is immaterial and unseen). In one of its noun forms, the comparing or setting together refers to the custom of tallying or dovetailing the two halves of a broken coin, called "symbols," in order to establish the identity of one or both of the persons possessing the matching halves. Etymologically, the word "symbol" can be traced to the Greek, σ υ μ β ά λ λ ε ι ν, which means to throw together or simply to place together, as when two things are juxtaposed for the purpose of comparing them.
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