It is natural for us to call gestures, as those employed in 4), or pictures as in 7), elements or instruments of language. (We talk sometimes of a language of gestures.) The pictures in 7) & other instruments of language which have a similar function I shall call patterns. (This explanation, as others which we have given, is vague, and meant to be vague.) We may say that words and patterns have different kinds of functions. When we make use of a pattern we compare something with it, e.g., a chair with the picture of a chair. We did not compare a slab with the word “slab”. In introducing the distinction, “word, pattern”, the idea was not to set up a final logical duality. We have only singled out two characteristic kinds of instruments from the variety of instruments in our language. We shall call “one”, “two”, “three”, etc. words. If instead of these signs we used “-”, “--”, “---”, “----”, we might call these patterns. Suppose in a language the numerals were “one”, “one one”, “one one one”, etc., should we call “one” a word or a pattern? The same element may in one place be used as word & in another as pattern. A circle might be the name for an ellipse, or on the other hand a pattern with which the ellipse is to be compared by a particular method of projection. Consider also these two systems of expression:
12).   A gives B an order consisting of two written symbols, the first an irregularly shaped patch of a certain colour, say green, the second the drawn outline of a geometrical figure, say a circle. B brings an object of this outline and that colour, say a circular green object.
13).   A gives B an order consisting of one symbol, a geometrical figure painted a particular colour, say a green circle. B brings him a green circular object. In 12) patterns correspond to our names of colours and other patterns to our names of shape. The symbols in 13) cannot be regarded as combinations of two such elements. A word in inverted commas can be called a pattern. Thus in the sentence, “He said, ‘Go to hell’”, ‘Go to hell’ is a pattern of what he said. Compare these cases: a) Someone says, “I whistled … (whistling a tune)„ || ”; b) Someone writes, “I whistled ”. An onomatopoetic word like “rustling” may be called a pattern. We call a very great variety of processes “comparing an object with a pattern”. We comprise many kinds of symbols under the name “pattern”. In 7) B compares a picture in the table with the objects he has before him. But what does comparing a picture with the object consist in? Suppose the table shewed: a) a picture of a hammer, of pincers, of a saw, of a chisel; b) on the other hand, pictures of twenty different kinds of butterflies. Imagine what the comparison in these cases would consist in, & note the difference. Compare with these cases a third case c) where the pictures in the table represent building stones drawn to scale, & the comparing has to be done with ruler and compasses. Suppose that B's task is to bring a piece of cloth of the colour of the sample. How are the colours of sample and cloth to be compared? Imagine a series of different cases:
14).   A shews the sample to B, upon which B goes and fetches the material “from memory”.
15).   A gives B the sample, B looks from the sample to the materials on the shelves from which he has to choose.
16).   B lays the sample on each bolt of material & chooses that one which he can't distinguish from the sample, for which the difference between the sample & the material seems to vanish.
17).   Imagine on the other hand that the order has been, “Bring a material slightly darker than this sample”. In 14) I said that B fetches the material “from memory”, which is using a common form of expression. But what might happen in such a case of comparing “from memory” is of the greatest variety. Imagine a few instances:
14a).   B has a memory image before his mind's eye when he goes for the material. He alternately looks at materials and recalls his image. He goes through this process with, say, five of the bolts, in some instances saying to himself, “Too dark”, in some instances saying to himself, “Too light”. At the fifth bolt he stops, says, “That's it”, & takes it from the shelf.
14b).   No memory image is before B's eye. He looks at four bolts, shaking his head each time, feeling some sort of mental tension. On reaching the fifth bolt, this tension relaxes, he nods his head, & takes the bolt down.
14c).   B goes to the shelf without a memory image, looks at five bolts one after the other, takes the fifth bolt from the shelf.
     “But this can't be all comparing consists in”.