 As previously noted, part and parcel of Peirce’s early account of signs is that an infinity of further signs both proceed and precede from any given sign. This is a consequence of the way Peirce thinks of the elements of signs at this early stage and seems to stem from his idea that interpretants are to count as further signs, and signs are interpretants of earlier signs. Since any sign must determine an interpretant in order to count as a sign, and interpretants are themselves signs, infinite chains of signs seem to become conceptually necessary.