No member of the group is able to take the sacred object, and at least one member of the group intends this aborted gesture as a sign designating the central object. This meaning is successfully communicated to the group, who follow suit by reading their aborted gestures as signs also. The sign focuses attention on the sacred power of the central object, which is conceived as the source of its own power. The object which compels attention yet prohibits consumption can only be represented. The basic advantage of the sign over the object is that "The sign is an economical substitute for its inaccessible referent. Things are scarce and consequently objects of potential contention; signs are abundant because they can be reproduced at will" (Gans, "Originary Thinking" 9). The desire for the object is mediated by the sign, which paradoxically both creates desire, by attributing significance to the object, yet also defers desire, by designating the object as sacred or taboo. The mimetic impulse is sublimated, expressed in a different form, as the act of representation. Individual self-consciousness is also born at this moment, in the recognition of alienation from the sacred center. The primary value/function of the sign in this scenario is ethical, as the deferral of violence, but the sign is also referential. What the sign refers to, strictly speaking, is not the physical object, but rather the mediated object of desire as realized in the imagination of each individual.