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Metaphor and Thought

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Chapter

2 - More about metaphor pp. 19-41

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 More about metaphor
MAX BLACK

This paper is intended to supplement the earlier study in which I intro-

duced and defended an "interaction view of metaphor" (namely, Black,
1962b, referred to hereafter as Metaphor). A reader unfamiliar with that
study will find a summary in the section entitled "The Interaction View
Revisited."
I shall try here to amplify my original formulation by explicating the
grounds of the metaphors of "interaction," "filtering," and "screening,"
which I used in trying to understand how metaphorical statements work. I
shall add some suggestions about the relations of a metaphor to its ground-
ing resemblances and analogies (somewhat neglected in Metaphor), with
the hope of also shedding some further light on the connections between
metaphors and models (for which, see Black, 1962c).
This occasion gives me an opportunity to take some notice of the numer-
ous criticisms, mostly friendly, which Metaphor has received since its origi-
nal publication. Pleased though I am at the widespread acceptance of the
interaction view, I agree with Monroe Beardsley, Ted Cohen, Paul Ricoeur,
and others that more work will be needed before the power and limitations
of this approach to the subject can be fully appreciated.

Reasons for current interest in metaphor

John Middleton Murry's essay, "Metaphor" (Murry, 1931), opens with the
remark that, "Discussions of metaphor - there are not many of them -
often strike us at first as superficial." Today both comments would be
inappropriate. The extraordinary volume of papers and books on the sub-

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20 MAX BLACK
ject produced during the past forty years might suggest that the subject is
inexhaustible. 1
Warren Shibles's useful bibliography (Shibles, 1971) has entries running
to nearly three hundred pages and contains perhaps as many as four thou-
sand titles. As for these discussions being superficial, one might rather
complain today of ungrounded profundity, because so many writers, agree-
ing with Murry that "metaphor is as ultimate as speech itself and speech as
ultimate as thought" (p. 1), rapidly draw ontological morals, while leaving
the nature of metaphorical speech and thought tantalizingly obscure.
In the inconclusive debate between the appreciators and depreciators of
metaphor, the former nowadays score most points. But they are characteris-
tically prone to inflation. As Nowottny (1962, p. 89) puts it:
Current criticism often takes metaphor au grand serieux, as a peephole on the
nature of transcendental reality, a prime means by which the imagination can see
into the life of things.
She adds:
This attitude makes it difficult to see the workings of those metaphors which deliber-
ately emphasize the frame, offering themselves as deliberate fabrications, as a
prime means of seeing into the life not of things but of the creative human conscious-
ness, framer of its own world.
Enthusiastic friends of metaphor are indeed prone to various kinds of
inflation, ready to see metaphor everywhere, in the spirit of Carlyle, who
said:
Examine language; what, if you except some primitive elements of natural sound,
what is it all but metaphors, recognized as such or no longer recognized; still fluid
and florid or now solid-grown and colourless? If these same primitive garments are
the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment Language then are metaphors its muscle
and living integuments. (From S. J. Brown, 1927, p. 41)
This quotation illustrates a pervasive tendency for writers, including
myself in Metaphor; to frame their basic insights in metaphorical terms.
A related inflationary thrust is shown in a persistent tendency, found in
Aristotle's still influential treatment, and manifest in as recent a discussion
as Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art (Goodman, 1968), to regard all
figurative uses of language as metaphorical, and in this way to ignore the
important distinctions between metaphor and such other figures of speech
as simile, metonymy, and synecdoche.
To make a sufficiently intricate topic still harder to handle, the deprecia-
tors tend to focus upon relatively trivial examples ("Man is a wolf) that
conform to the traditional "substitution view," and the special form of it that
I called the "comparison view" (see Black, 1962b, especially pp. 30-37),
whereas appreciators, in their zeal to establish "that metaphor is the omni-
present principle of language" (Richards, 1936b, p. 92), 2 tend to dwell upon

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 More about metaphor 21
excitingly suggestive but obscure examples from Shakespeare, Donne, Hop-
kins, or Dylan Thomas, to the neglect of simpler instances that also require
attention in a comprehensive theory.
Although I am on the side of the appreciators, who dwell upon what
Empson and Ricoeur call "vital" metaphors, I think their opponents (typi-
cally philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, and logicians) are right in
asking for less "vital" or less "creative" metaphors to be considered. It may
well be a mistaken strategy to treat profound metaphors as paradigms.
In what follows, I shall steer a middle course, taking as points of depar-
ture metaphors complex enough to invite analysis, yet sufficiently transpar-
ent for such analysis to be reasonably uncontroversial. My interest in this
paper is particularly directed toward the "cognitive aspects" of certain
metaphors, whether in science, philosophy, theology, or ordinary life, and
their power to present in a distinctive and irreplaceable way, insight into
"how things are" (for which, see the section entitled "Can a Metaphorical
Statement Ever Reveal 'How Things Are'?"). I shall leave the "poetic
metaphors" invoked by Nowottny for another occasion.

What is the "mystery" of metaphor?

One writer, who might be speaking for many, says, "Among the mysteries
of human speech, metaphor has remained one of the most baffling"
(Boyle, 1954, p. 257). But what is this supposed mystery? Given the
prevalence or, if we are to trust Richards and many other thinkers, the
ubiquity of metaphor, metaphorical discourse might well seem no more
mysterious than singing or dancing - and, one might add, no more im-
proper or deviant.
In the sentence following the one I have quoted, Father Boyle refers to
the "odd predilection for asserting a thing to be what it is not." So perhaps
the "mystery" is simply that, taken as literal, a metaphorical statement
appears to be perversely asserting something to be what it is plainly known
not to be. (And that makes the metaphor user look like a liar or a de-
ceiver.) When Juliet says to Romeo, "The light that shines comes from
thine eyes," she surely cannot really mean that his eyeballs are lighting up
the chamber; when Wallace Stevens says, "A poem is a pheasant," he
cannot really mean that it flaps its wings and has a long tail - for such things
are plainly false and absurd. But such "absurdity" and "falsity" are of the
essence: in their absence, we should have no metaphor but merely a literal
utterance. So a metaphor user, unless he is merely babbling, would seem,
according to the ancient formula, to "say one thing and mean another." But
why?
An intelligent child, hearing his scientist father refer to a "field of force,"
might ask - but with a twinkle in his eye, one hopes - "And who ploughs
it?" In order to feel the supposed "mystery," one needs to recapture the

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22 MAX BLACK
naivete of somebody who takes metaphorical utterances to be literal or the
false naivete of someone who pretends to do so. But to assume that a
metaphorical utterance presents something as what it is plainly not - or to
assume that its producer really does intend to say one thing while meaning
something else - is to beg disastrously a prime question by accepting the
misleading view of a metaphor as some kind of deviation or aberration
from proper usage.
Somebody seriously making a metaphorical statement - say, "The Lord
is my Shepherd" - might reasonably claim that he meant just what he said,
having chosen the words most apt to express his thought, attitudes, and
feelings, and was by no means guilty of uttering a crass absurdity. Such a
position cannot be rejected out of hand.
The danger of an approach that treats literal utterance as an un-
problematic standard, while regarding metaphorical utterance as problem-
atic or mysterious by contrast, is that it tends to encourage reductionist
theories: As the plain man might say, "If the metaphor producer didn't
mean what he said, why didn't he say something else?" We are headed for
the blind alley taken by those innumerable followers of Aristotle who have
supposed metaphors to be replaceable by literal translations.
A sympathetic way of following Father Boyle's lead might be to start by
asking what distinguishes a metaphorical statement from a literal one.
That, of course, assumes that there is at least a prima facie and observable
difference between metaphorical and literal statements - a donnee that
seems to me initially less problematic than it does to some theorists. When
a writer says, "Men are verbs, not nouns," a reader untrammeled by theo-
retical preconceptions about the ubiquity of metaphor will immediately
recognize that "verbs" and "nouns" are not being used literally. Dictionar-
ies do not include men as a special case of verbs, and a competent speaker
will not list them as paradigm cases of the application of that word. And so
in general, it would be relatively easy to devise tests, for those who want
them, of the literal meaning of the word that is the metaphorical "focus" of
a metaphorical utterance. Tacit knowledge of such literal meaning induces
the characteristic feeling of dissonance or "tension" between the focus and
its literal "frame."
Starting so, and acknowledging a clear prima facie difference between
literal and metaphorical uses of expressions, need not, however, prejudge
the validity of some "deeper" insight that might eventually reject the com-
monsensical distinction between the literal and the metaphorical as superfi-
cial and ultimately indefensible. But such a revisionist view needs the sup-
port of a thorough exploration of the implicit rationale of the common-sense
distinction. An effort to do so will naturally concern itself with crucial supple-
mentary questions about the point of using metaphors and, more generally,
about the distinctive powers of metaphorical discourse.
Some writers, notably Coleridge, but not he alone, have imputed a pecu-

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 More about metaphor 23
liarly "creative" role to metaphor (for which, see the section entitled "Are
Metaphors Ever 'Creative'?"). That a puzzle or mystery might be per-
ceived in this connection can be supported by the following train of
thought. A successful metaphor is realized in discourse, is embodied in the
given "text," and need not be treated as a riddle. So the writer or speaker is
employing conventional means to produce a nonstandard effect, while us-
ing only the standard syntactic and semantic resources of his speech commu-
nity. Yet the meaning of an interesting metaphor is typically new or "cre-
ative," not inferable from the standard lexicon. A major task for theorists
of metaphor, then, is to explain how such an outcome - striking for all its
familiarity - is brought about.
We may usefully consider, for the sake of contrast, the situation of a
participant in a rule-governed practice more tightly constrained than
speech - say the game of chess. There, too, a creative aspect is readily
discernible, because even if all the mistakes are waiting to be discovered
(as a master once said) a player must still search for and ultimately choose
his move: In most chess positions, there is no decision procedure and no
demonstrably "correct" move. Yet the player's scope for creativity is
sharply limited by the game's inflexible rules, which provide him always
with a finite and well-defined set of options.
Imagine now a variation, say "epichess," in which a player would have
the right to move any piece as if it were another of equal or inferior value (a
bishop moving for once like a knight, say, or a pawn) provided the opponent
accepted such a move. There we have a primitive model of conversation
and discourse, where almost any "move" is acceptable if one can get away
with it; that is, if a competent receiver will accept it. But even here there
are some constraints upon creativity: one cannot couple any two nouns at
random and be sure to produce an effective metaphor. (If the reader
doubts this, let him try to make sense of "a chair is a syllogism." In the
absence of some specially constructed context, this must surely count as a
failed metaphor.)
But what is a "creative," rule-violating metaphor producer really trying
to do? And what is a competent hearer expected to do in response to such a
move?
In Metaphor, I suggested that such questions, and most of the others
posed by theorists of metaphor, might be regarded as concerned with "the
'logical grammar' of 'metaphor' and words having related meaning"; or as
expressing "attempts to become clearer about some uses of the word 'meta-
phor' " (p. 25); or as the start of an effort "to analyze the notion of
metaphor" (p. 26). Although this semantic emphasis has alienated some of
my critics, I see no particular harm in it. There would be no substantial
difference in an approach that was conceived, in a more ontological idiom,
as an effort to "become clearer about the nature of metaphor." Indeed, I
would regard the two formulas as equivalent.

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24 MAX BLACK

Identifying the targets

The reader will have noticed my references to metaphorical statements.
Indeed, my standing concern is with full metaphorical statements and,
derivatively, with "statement-ingredients" (words or phrases used meta-
phorically) only as they occur in specific and relatively complete acts of
expression and communication. (Hereafter, "metaphor" is usually short for
"metaphorical statement.") A "statement," in my intended sense, will be
identified by quoting a whole sentence, or a set of sentences, together with
as much of the relevant verbal context, or the nonverbal setting, as may be
needed for an adequate grasp of the actual or imputed speaker's meaning. I
use "meaning" here for whatever a competent hearer may be said to have
grasped when he succeeds in responding adequately to the actual or hypo-
thetical verbal action consisting in the serious utterance of the sentence(s)
in question.
As examples of such identifications of metaphorical statements, I offer:
(1) "L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est
un roseau pensant" (Pascal in the Pensees) - or, more briefly, Pas-
cal's metaphor of man as a thinking reed.
(2) "You are a metaphor and they are lies/Or there true least where their
knot chance unfurls." (William Empson, Letter F)
(3) Ezra Pound's metaphor of education as sheepherding (in his ABC of
Reading, passim).
Of these metaphors, the last is relatively the most independent of its
context and might be sufficiently identified, with suppression of Pound's
name, as "the metaphor of education as sheepherding." Yet, justice to
Pound's view might demand citation of relevant passages in his tract. Tex-
tual elaboration is more obviously needed to appreciate Pascal's decep-
tively simple metaphor or Empson's characteristically obscure one.
I propose to distinguish what is identified merely by a formula like "the
metaphor of A as B," without further specification of its contextual use, as
a metaphor-theme, regarded as an abstraction from the metaphorical state-
ments in which it does or might occur. A metaphor-theme is available for
repeated use, adaptation, and modification by a variety of speakers or
thinkers on any number of specific occasions.3
One danger in attending mainly to what I have called metaphor-themes is
that of postulating a standard response to a given metaphorical statement -
a response determined by linguistic, conceptual, cultural, or other conven-
tions. Such a view is untenable because a metaphorical statement involves a
rule violation: There can be no rules for "creatively" violating rules.4 And
that is why there can be no dictionary (though there might be a thesaurus) of
metaphors.
Any attempt to be more precise about the identifying and individuating
criteria for metaphorical statements will be embarrassed by the following

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 More about metaphor 25
difficulty. The very same metaphorical statement, as I wish to use that expres-
sion, may appropriately receive a number of different and even partially
conflicting readings. Thus Empson's metaphor, reproduced above, might be
taken by one reader, but not another, as imputing falsity to the person
addressed. We might choose to say that both were right about two different
metaphors expressed in Empson's words; or, less plausibly, that one reader
must have been mistaken. There is an inescapable indeterminacy in the
notion of a given metaphorical statement, so long as we count its import as
part of its essence.
I hope these brief terminological remarks will serve for the present occa-
sion. In what follows, I shall not insist pedantically upon using the qualifi-
ers "-statement" or "-theme," usually leaving the context to resolve any
possible ambiguity.

On classifying metaphors; and the importance of emphasis and resonance

Given the prevalence of metaphorical statements and their manifest versa-
tility, a student of the subject would find some generally accepted classifica-
tion helpful in making even the simplest distinctions: But at present, he is
in an even worse situation than a biologist before Linnaeus. For the only
entrenched classification is grounded in the trite opposition (itself ex-
pressed metaphorically) between "dead" and "live" metaphors. This is no
more helpful than, say, treating a corpse as a special case of a person: A so-
called dead metaphor is not a metaphor at all, but merely an expression
that no longer has a pregnant metaphorical use.
A competent reader is not expected to recognize such a familiar expres-
sion as "falling in love" as a metaphor, to be taken au grand serieux.
Indeed, it is doubtful whether that expression was ever more than a case of
catachresis (using an idiom to fill a gap in the lexicon).
If the "actuality" of a metaphor, its possessing the distinctive characteris-
tics, whatever they may be, of genuine metaphorical efficacy, is important
enough to be marked, one might consider replacing the dead and alive
contrast by a set of finer discriminations: distinguishing perhaps between
expressions whose etymologies, genuine or fancied, suggest a metaphor
beyond resuscitation (a muscle as a little mouse, musculus); those where
the original, now usually unnoticed, metaphor can be usefully restored
(obligation as involving some kind of bondage); and those, the objects of
my present interest, that are, and are perceived to be, actively metaphoric.
Appropriate labels might be: "extinct," "dormant," and "active" meta-
phors. But not much is to be expected of this schema or any more finely
tuned substitute. (I shall be concerned hereafter only with metaphors need-
ing no artificial respiration, recognized by speaker and hearer as authenti-
cally "vital" or active.)
Given an active metaphorical statement, it would be useful to discrimi-

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26 MAX BLACK
nate two aspects, which I shall call emphasis and resonance. A metaphori-
cal utterance is emphatic, in my intended sense, to the degree that its
producer will allow no variation upon or substitute for the words used -
and especially not for what in Metaphor I called the "focus," the salient
word or expression, whose occurrence in the literal frame invests the utter-
ance with metaphorical force. Plausible opposites to "emphatic" might
include: "expendable," "optional," "decorative," and "ornamental." (Rela-
tively dispensable metaphors are often no more than literary or rhetorical
flourishes that deserve no more serious attention than musical grace
notes.) Emphatic metaphors are intended to be dwelt upon for the sake of
their unstated implications: Their producers need the receiver's coopera-
tion in perceiving what lies behind the words used.
How far such interpretative response can reach will depend upon the
complexity and power of the metaphor-theme in question: Some meta-
phors, even famous ones, barely lend themselves to implicative elabora-
tion, while others, perhaps less interesting, prove relatively rich in back-
ground implications. For want of a better label, I shall call metaphorical
utterances that support a high degree of implicative elaboration resonant.
Resonance and emphasis are matters of degree. They are not indepen-
dent: Highly emphatic metaphors tend to be highly resonant (though there
are exceptions), while the unemphatic occurrence of a markedly resonant
metaphor is apt to produce a dissonance, sustained by irony or some simi-
larly distancing operation.
Finally, I propose to call a metaphor that is both markedly emphatic and
resonant a strong metaphor. My purpose in the remainder of this paper is to
analyze the raison d'etre and the mode of operation of strong metaphors,
treating those that are relatively "weak" on account of relatively low em-
phasis or resonance as etiolated specimens.
A weak metaphor might be compared to an unfunny joke, or an
unilluminating philosophical epigram: One understands the unsuccessful or
failed verbal actions in the light of what would be funny, illuminating, or
what have you. Yet if all jokes are intended to be funny, and fail to the
degree that they are not, not all metaphors aim at strength, and some may
be none the worse for that.
Consider the following example from a letter of Virginia Woolf to Lytton
Strachey:
How you weave in every scrap - my god what scraps! - of interest to be had, like
(you must pardon the metaphor) a snake insinuating himself through innumerable
golden rings - (Do snakes? - I hope so). (Nicolson & Trautmann, 1976, p. 205)
The snake metaphor used here should certainly count as weak in my termi-
nology, because Strachey was intended to take the rich implicative back-
ground lightly.

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 More about metaphor 27

The interaction view revisited

The interaction view which I presented in Metaphor was there character-
ized as an attempt "to become clearer about some uses of the word
'metaphor' - or, if one prefers the material model, to analyze the notion of
metaphor" (pp. 25-6). In retrospect, I would prefer to think of my position
as a help to understanding how strong metaphorical statements work. But
this shift of formulation from conceptual analysis to a functional analysis,
though potentially important, need not detain us.
The merits of the interaction view, a development and modification of I.
A. Richards's valuable insights, should be weighed against those of its only
available alternatives - the traditional "substitution view" and "comparison
view" (a special case of the former). Briefly stated, the substitution view
regards "the entire sentence that is the locus of the metaphor as replacing
some set of literal sentences" (p. 31); while the comparison view takes the
imputed literal paraphrase to be a statement of some similarity or analogy,
and so takes every metaphor to be a condensed or elliptic simile (pp. 35-6).
The reader will notice that both of these views treat metaphors as unem-
phatic, in my terminology - in principle, expendable if one disregards the
incidental pleasures of stating figuratively what might just as well have
been said literally.
A brief summary of the preferred interaction view might consist of the
following claims, based upon the concluding summary of Metaphor (pp.
44-5). I reproduce the original formulations, with minor improvements,
appending afterthoughts in each case.
1. A metaphorical statement has two distinct subjects, to be identified as
the "primary" subject and the "secondary" one.
In Metaphor, I spoke instead of the "principal" and "subsidiary"
subjects. The duality of reference is marked by the contrast between
the metaphorical statement's focus (the word or words used non-
literally) and the surrounding literal frame.
2. The secondary subject is to be regarded as a system rather than an
individual thing.
Thus, I think of Wallace Stevens's remark that "Society is a sea" as
being not so much about the sea (considered as a thing) as about a
system of relationships (the "implicative complex" discussed below)
signaled by the presence of the word "sea" in the sentence in question.
(In Metaphor, I proposed that the primary subject, also, be taken as a
system. But it seems in retrospect needlessly paradoxical, though not
plainly mistaken, to say that Stevens was viewing society, too, as a
system of social relationships.) In retrospect, the intended emphasis
upon "systems," rather than upon "things" or "ideas" (as in Richards)
looks like one of the chief novelties in the earlier study.

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28 MAX BLACK

3. The metaphorical utterance works by "projecting upon" the primary

subject a set of "associated implications," comprised in the implicative
complex, that are predicable of the secondary subject.
The label "implicative complex" is new. "Projection" is, of course,
a metaphor, that will need further discussion. In the earlier study, I
spoke of a "system of associated commonplaces" (which later pro-
voked some pointed criticisms by Paul Ricoeur). My notion was that
the secondary subject, in a way partly depending upon the context of
metaphorical use, determines a set of what Aristotle called endoxa,
current opinions shared by members of a certain speech-community.
But I also emphasized, as I should certainly wish to do now, that a
metaphor producer may introduce a novel and nonplatitudinous
"implication-complex."
4. The maker of a metaphorical statement selects, emphasizes, sup-
presses, and organizes features of the primary subject by applying to it
statements isomorphic with the members of the secondary subject's
implicative complex.
The mechanisms of such "projection" (a still serviceable metaphor)
are discussed and illustrated in the next section.
5. In the context of a particular metaphorical statement, the two subjects
"interact" in the following ways: (a) the presence of the primary sub-
ject incites the hearer to select some of the secondary subject's proper-
ties; and (b) invites him to construct a parallel implication-complex
that can fit the primary subject; and (c) reciprocally induces parallel
changes in the secondary subject.
This may be considered a crux for the interaction view (an at-
tempted explication of Richards's striking image of the "interanima-
tion of words"). Although I speak figuratively here of the subjects
interacting, such an outcome is of course produced in the minds of the
speaker and hearer: It is they who are led to engage in selecting,
organizing, and projecting. I think of a metaphorical statement (even
a weak one) as a verbal action essentially demanding uptake, a cre-
ative response from a competent reader. In Metaphor, I said -
scandalizing some of my subsequent critics - that the imputed interac-
tion involves "shifts in meaning of words belonging to the same family
or system as the metaphorical expression" (p. 45). I meant, of course,
a shift in the speaker's meaning - and the corresponding hearer's
meaning - what both of them understand by words, as used on the
particular occasion.

How metaphorical statements work

Consider "Marriage is a zero-sum game." In this relatively "active" meta-
phor the implication-complex might be spelled out somewhat as follows:

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 More about metaphor 29
(Gl) A "game" is a contest;
(G2) between two opponents;
(G3) in which one player can win only at the expense of the other.
The corresponding system of imputed claims about marriage depends
crucially upon the interpretations given to "contest," "opponents," and
especially to "winning." One might try:
(Ml) A marriage is a sustained struggle;
(M2) between two contestants;
(M3) in which the rewards (power? money? satisfaction?) of one contes-
tant are gained only at the other's expense.5
Here, the "projected" propositions can be taken literally - or almost so,
no matter what one thinks of their plausibility (the metaphor's aptness not
being here in question).
Such a heavy-handed analysis of course neglects the ambiance of the
secondary subject, the suggestions and valuations that necessarily attach
themselves to a game-theory view of marriage, and thereby suffuse the
receiver's perception of it: A marriage that can be seen as a competitive
"game" of skill and calculation is not the kind made in heaven.
The relations between the three members of the implication complex
(Gl-3) in this relatively simple example and their correlated statements
about marriage (Ml-3) are a mixed lot. M2 might be said to predicate of
marriage precisely what G2 does of a two-person game (with some hesita-
tion about the matching of "opponents" and "contestants"); but in the shift
from Gl to Ml it seems more plausible to discern some similarity rather
than strict identity; and in M3, finally, "gain" must surely have an extended
sense, by contrast with its sense in G3, since marital struggles usually do
not end in clear-cut conventional victories. The difficulty in making firm
and decisive judgments on such points is, I think, present in all cases of
metaphorical statement. Since we must necessarily read "behind the
words," we cannot set firm bounds to the admissible interpretations: Ambi-
guity is a necessary by-product of the metaphor's suggestiveness.
So far as I can see, after scrutinizing many examples, the relations be-
tween the meanings of the corresponding key words of the two implication
complexes can be classified as (a) identity, (b) extension, typically ad hoc,
(c) similarity, (d) analogy, or (e) what might be called "metaphorical cou-
pling" (where, as often happens, the original metaphor implicates subordi-
nate metaphors).
Let us now idealize the connection between the two implication-
complexes (G and M) in the following way: G consists of certain state-
ments, say Pa, Qb, . . . , and aRb, cSd, . . . , while M comprises corre-
sponding statements Pa', Q'b'', . . . , and a'R'b', c'S'd'', . . . , where P is
uniquely correlated with P', a with a', R with R', and so on. Then the two
systems have, as mathematicians say, the same "structure"; they are
isomorphic (see Eberle, 1970, for a lucid exposition of this notion). One

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30 MAX BLACK
important deviation from the mathematical conception is that G is linked
with M by a "mixed lot" of projective relations, as we saw in the game-
marriage example, and not (as typically in mathematical contexts) by a
single projective relation.
With such conceptions to hand, we need not speak metaphorically about
"projecting" the secondary system. Viewed in this way (and neglecting the
important suggestions and connotations - the ambience, tone, and atti-
tudes that are also projected upon M) G is precisely what I have called in
the past an "analog-model" (cf. Black, 1962c).61 am now impressed, as I
was insufficiently so when composing Metaphor, by the tight connections
between the notions of models and metaphors. Every implication-complex
supported by a metaphor's secondary subject, I now think, is a model of the
ascriptions imputed to the primary subject: Every metaphor is the tip of a
submerged model.

Metaphors and similes

I have said that there is a similarity, analogy or, more generally, an identity
of structure between the secondary implication-complex of a metaphor and
the set of assertions - the primary implication-complex - that it maps. In
"Poverty is a crime," "crime" and "poverty" are nodes of isomorphic net-
works, in which assertions about crime are correlated one-to-one with
corresponding statements about poverty.
Hence, every metaphor may be said to mediate an analogy or structural
correspondence. (That is the correct insight behind the classical compari-
son view of metaphor as elliptical or truncated simile.) Hence, also, every
metaphorical statement may be said to implicate a likeness-statement and a
comparison-statement, each weaker than the original metaphorical state-
ment. ("I didn't say that he is like an echo; I said and meant that he is an
echo!") But to perceive that a metaphor is grounded in similarity and
analogy is not to agree with Whatley (1961) that "the simile or comparison
may be considered as differing inform only from a metaphor" or with Bain
(1888) that "the metaphor is a comparison implied in the use of a term" (cf.
Metaphor, p. 36). Implication is not the same as covert identity: Looking at
a scene through blue spectacles is different from comparing that scene with
something else.
To call, "Poverty is a crime," a simile or comparison is either to say too
little or too much. In a given context of utterance, "Poverty is like a crime"
may still be figurative, and hardly more than a stylistic variant upon the
original metaphorical statement. Burns might have said, "My Love is a red,
red rose," instead of "My Love is like a red, red rose," if the meter had
permitted, with little semantic difference, if any. But to suppose that the
metaphorical statement is an abstract or precis of a literal point-by-point
comparison, in which the primary and secondary subjects are juxtaposed

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 More about metaphor 31
for the sake of noting dissimilarities as well as similarities, is to misconstrue
the function of a metaphor. In discursively comparing one subject with
another, we sacrifice the distinctive power and effectiveness of a good
metaphor. The literal comparison lacks the ambience and suggestiveness,
and the imposed "view" of the primary subject, upon which a metaphor's
power to illuminate depends. In a metaphor as powerful as Pascal's, of man
as a "thinking reed" (un roseau pensant), the supporting ground is discon-
certingly simple, being intended chiefly to highlight human frailty and
weakness (faiblesse). The figure's effect depends, in this instance, very
much on the ambience.
It is helpful to remind oneself that "is like" has many uses, among them:
to point to some obvious, striking, or salient resemblance as in, "Doesn't
he look like Mussolini?" (where some such qualification as "looks like" or
"sounds like" is needed); in an "open comparison," to mark the start of a
detailed, literal point-by-point comparison; or as a mere stylistic variation
upon the metaphorical form (which raises nearly all the questions I am here
trying to answer).

Thinking in metaphors
The foregoing account, which treats a metaphor, roughly speaking, as an
instrument for drawing implications grounded in perceived analogies of
structure between two subjects belonging to different domains, has paid no
attention to the state of mind of somebody who affirms a metaphorical
statement. A good metaphor sometimes impresses, strikes, or seizes its
producer: We want to say we had a "flash of insight," not merely that we
were comparing A with B, or even that we were thinking of A as if it were
B. But to say seriously, emphatically, that, "Life is the receipt and transmis-
sion of information," is at least to be thinking of life as the passage of
information (but not that, merely). Similarly for all metaphorical utter-
ances that are asserted and not merely entertained.
It might, therefore, be a large step forward in becoming clearer about
what might be called metaphorical thought (a neglected topic of major
importance) if we had a better grasp on what it is to think of something (A)
as something else (B). What, then, is it to think of A as Bl
Consider the relatively simple case of thinking of the geometrical figure
sometimes called the "Star of David" in the following different ways:
(1) as an equilateral triangle set upon another of the same size (Figure
2.1);
(2) as a regular hexagon, bearing an equilateral triangle upon each of its
edges (Figure 2.2);
(3) as three superimposed congruent parallelograms (Figure 2.3);
(4) as the trace left by a point moving continuously around the perimeter
of the Star and then around the interior hexagon;

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32 MAX BLACK

Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3

(5) as in (4), but with the point tracing out the hexagon before moving to
the outside.
One might ask a child to think of the figure in each of these ways in turn. In
the difficult third case of the three parallelograms, he would probably need
some help, so there is something that he can be taught to do. But what?
The images one forms in trying to obey instructions corresponding to
these five aspects of the Star are heuristically essential. A slow learner
might be helped by having the different geometrical forms outlined in
contrasting colors or, in cases (4) and (5), by watching a moving pencil
point actually produce the figure. But the comprehension could not consist
merely in possessing such images, important as they may be: Any compe-
tent teacher would ask the learner such questions as whether the moving
point could trace the whole figure continuously - or, in the simpler cases,
whether the triangles in question had the same size and shape. A test of
mastery is the ability to tease out the implications of the intended percep-
tual analysis.
So far, the case somewhat resembles what happens when we see some A
as metaphorically B: The child sees the Star as superimposed parallelo-
grams; a metaphor thinker sees life as a flow of information; both apply
concepts that yield discovery; both manifest skills shown in ability to tease
out suitable implications of their respective insights. But this comparison is
somewhat lame, because the child learner, unlike the metaphor thinker,
has not yet been required to make conceptual innovations, the parallelo-
grams he perceives being just those he had antecedently learned to draw
and recognize.
So let us vary the illustration. One might ask a child to think of each of
the following figures as a triangle: one composed of three curved segments;
a straight line segment (viewed as a collapsed triangle, with its vertex on
the base); two parallel lines issuing from a base segment (with the vertex
"gone to infinity"); and so on. The imaginative effort demanded in such
exercises (familiar to any student of mathematics) is not a bad model for

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 More about metaphor 33
what is needed in producing, handling, and understanding all but the most
trivial of metaphors. That the use of the relevant concepts employed should
change (so that "game" is made to apply to marriage; "information" to life;
"reed" to man; and so on) seems essential to the operation.
Why stretch and twist, press and expand, concepts in this way - Why try
to see A as metaphorically B, when it literally is not Bl Well, because we
can do so, conceptual boundaries not being rigid, but elastic and perme-
able; and because we often need to do so, the available literal resources of
the language being insufficient to express our sense of the rich correspon-
dences, interrelations, and analogies of domains conventionally separated;
and because metaphorical thought and utterance sometimes embody in-
sight expressible in no other fashion.

How do we recognize metaphors?

While praising the interaction theory, Monroe C. Beardsley has urged that
it is:
. . . incomplete not explaining what it is about the metaphorical attribution that
informs us that the modifier is metaphorical rather than literal. (Beardsley, 1958, p.
161, italics added)
Elsewhere, Beardsley (1967) states the tasks of a theory of metaphor as
follows:
The problem is to understand how that radical shift of intension [how the metaphori-
cal modifer acquires a special sense in its particular context] comes about; how we
know that the modifier is to be taken metaphorically; and how we construe or
explicate its meaning correctly, (p. 285, italics added)
The supplement that Beardsley desires, therefore, seems to be some diag-
nostic criterion, as it might be called, for the occurrence of a metaphorical
statement, some mark or indication that will allow its presence and meta-
phorical character to be detected. I use "diagnostic criterion" here to sug-
gest a bodily symptom, such as a rash, that serves as a reliable sign of some
abnormal state though not necessarily qualifying as a defining condition.
But Beardsley may, after all, be seeking more ambitiously an observable
and necessary condition for a statement to be metaphorical.
The need for some such identification criterion, essential or merely diag-
nostic, has been forcibly urged by other writers. Ina Loewenberg says:
Any satisfactory formulation of the principle of metaphor requires the identifiabil-
ity of metaphors since they cannot be understood or produced unless recognized as
such. (Loewenberg, 1973, p. 316)
Here "the principle of a metaphor" alludes to her contention that meta-
phors "exemplify a single principle of semantic change." If "identifiability"
is taken in a broad sense, I could agree with Loewenberg's requirement,

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34 MAX BLACK

with a possible reservation about a "producer" being necessarily aware of

using a metaphor. But the rest of her valuable essay shows that she, like
Beardsley at least part of the time, is demanding what I have called a
"diagnostic criterion" for a statement to be metaphorical.
Beardsley proceeds to offer such a diagnostic criterion as the cornerstone
of his "controversion theory."7 According to him, the recognizable mark of
a metaphorical statement is that taken literally it would have to count as a
logical contradiction or an absurdity, in either case something patently
false.
An obvious objection is that this test, so far as it fits, will apply equally to
such other tropes as oxymoron or hyperbole, so that it would at best certify
the presence of some figurative statement, but not necessarily a metaphor.
A more serious objection is that authentic metaphors need not manifest the
invoked contro version, though many of them do. Suppose I counter the
conversational remark, "As we know, man is a wolf - homo homini
lupus" - by saying, "Oh, no, man is not a wolf but an ostrich."8 In context,
"Man is not a wolf" is as metaphorical as its opposite, yet it clearly fails the
controversion test. The point is easy to generalize: The negation of any
metaphorical statement can itself be a metaphorical statement and hence
possibly true if taken literally. Nor need the examples be confined to such
negatives. When we say, "He does indeed live in a glass house," of a man
who actually lives in a house made of glass, nothing prevents us from using
the sentence to make a metaphorical statement.
Our recognition of a metaphorical statement depends essentially upon
two things: Our general knowledge of what it is to be a metaphorical
statement, and our specific judgment that a metaphorical reading of a
given statement is here preferable to a literal one. The decisive reason for
the choice of interpretation may be, as it often is, the patent falsity or
incoherence of the literal reading - but it might equally be the banality of
that reading's truth, its pointlessness, or its lack of congruence with the
surrounding text and nonverbal setting. The situation in cases of doubt as
to how a statement is best taken is basically the same as that in other cases
of ambiguity. And just as there is no infallible test for resolving ambiguity,
so there is none to be expected in discriminating the metaphorical from the
literal.
There is an important mistake of method in seeking an infallible mark of
the presence of metaphors. The problem seems to me analogous to that of
distinguishing a joke from a nonjoke. If a philosopher, whose children have
trouble in deciding when he is joking, introduces the convention that a
raised thumb indicates seriousness, he might sometimes be joking in raising
his thumb! An explicit assertion that a remark is being made metaphori-
cally (perhaps the best candidate for a reliable diagnostic sign) cannot
guarantee that a metaphor is in question, for that does not depend simply
upon its producer's intentions, and the sign might itself be used metaphori-

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 More about metaphor 35
cally. Every criterion for a metaphor's presence, however plausible, is
defeasible in special circumstances.
If Beardsley and other critics of the interaction view are, after all, not
looking for a diagnostic criterion but rather something essential to a meta-
phor's being a metaphor, my above rebuttals will miss that mark. But then
the tension of which Beardsley and others speak seems to be only one
feature of that peculiar mode of language use in which metaphor's focus
induces a "projection" of a "secondary system," as already explained in this
paper. "Tension" seems to me somewhat less suggestive than "interaction,"
but there is no point in quarrelling over labels.

Are metaphors ever "creative"?

The production of a new metaphorical statement obviously introduces
some small change into a world that includes statements and the thoughts
they express, as well as clouds and rocks. Even the reaffirmation of an old
metaphor can be viewed as a trivial insertion into the world of a new token
of a known statement-type. That metaphors should be creative in this
boring way is hardly worth mentioning except for the sake of contrast.
Emphasis upon the alleged creativity of metaphors becomes more inter-
esting when they are viewed as miniature poems or poem fragments. But
the production of a work of art would interest me here, given the general
thrust of this essay, only if such a work "tells us something about the
world." Indeed, I intend to defend the implausible contention that a meta-
phorical statement can sometimes generate new knowledge and insight by
changing relationships between the things designated (the principal and
subsidiary subjects). To agree would be to assign a strong cognitive func-
tion to certain metaphors; but to disagree is not necessarily to relegate
them entirely to some realm of fiction.9 For it may be held that such
metaphors reveal connections without making them. (Would it not be unset-
tling to suppose that a metaphor might be self-certifying, by generating the
very reality to which it seems to draw attention?)
In my earlier essay, I stated one form of what might be called the "strong
creativity thesis" in this way:
It would be more illuminating in some of these cases [i.e., of metaphors imputing simi-
larities difficult to discern otherwise] to say that the metaphor creates the similarity
than to say that it formulates some similarity antecedently existing. {Metaphor, p. 37)
It will be noticed that the claim was explicitly hedged: to say, "it would be
more illuminating," to view some metaphors as ontologically creative falls
short of claiming that they are creative. Yet no remark in Metaphor has
provoked stronger dissent.
Khatchadourian (1968), in the course of a generally approving account
of the interaction view, thinks the thesis cannot be right. He asks rhetori-

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36 MAX BLACK

cally, "How can one, anyway, literally create a feature or a similarity by

means of a metaphor?" (p. 235). Granting that a metaphor user "can bring
into prominence known features . . . which he thinks deserve special atten-
tion" (ibid., my italics) and thereby "give us a new vision or a new insight,"
Khatchadourian concludes that, "The creation of some effect in the hearer
or reader [does not involve] the creation of a similarity between the princi-
pal and the subsidiary subject" (p. 236).
Long ago, S. J. Brown (1927) summarily dismissed a related contention
(on the part of Gustave Lanson) that, by means of metaphor, "Our mind,
perceiving a common quality in two different objects, or creating between
them a relation which assimilates them to one another, names one of them
by a term which suits, or belongs to, the other" (p. 47; emphasis added).
Brown says: "How the mind can create a relation which does not previ-
ously exist, M. Lanson does not explain, nor ought such explanation be
expected of a writer on literary theory" (ibid.). Such offhand rejection is
clearly motivated by a picture of the "relation" in question as being "objec-
tive" or "out there" - existing quite as independently as the relation of
"having-the-same-height-as": One rightly wants to deny that cubits can be
added to stature by saying or thinking so. But this conception of some
objective relation as antecedently existing is question-begging when ap-
plied to that variegated set of relations that we bundle together as "similar-
ity."10 When applied to the explication of metaphors, "is like" is not as
sharply contrasted with "looks like" as "is taller than" is with "looks taller
than." The imputed relations in a generative metaphor, one might say,
must have a subjective as well as an objective aspect, but each may contrib-
ute to the other, as I hope to show. I shall try to make the strong creativity
thesis at least plausible by considering a series of five answers to questions
having the form, "Did X exist before it was perceived?"
(1) Did the other side of the moon exist before it was seen?
It would take a fanatical idealist to say no. We think, of course, of the
rocks, plains, and mountains as having been there all the time, prior to
observation. It is crucial to this conception - as contrasted with some of the
following examples - that the existence of the physical objects and configu-
rations in question is held to depend in no way upon the existence of
human or other sentient beings, or upon their contingent possession and
use of thought and language.
(2) Did genes exist before their existence was recognized by biologists?
The question might be rephrased as, "Did things properly called 'genes'
exist before they were admitted into accepted biological theory?" An affir-
mative answer is no doubt used to contrast this case with those in which the
"objects" in question were synthesized by human agency. Qua things found
but not made, "natural" and not "artificial," genes - it must be agreed -
were "there all the time," even before their existence was discovered. But
it is less obvious that genes "were there all the time, waiting to be discov-

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 More about metaphor 37
ered." The term "gene" has its place within a man-made theory, in whose
absence it would have no intelligible use: The relation between "gene" and
what that term designates is more like that of a dot on a map and the city it
represents than like that of a personal name and the person it designates.
So the proper answer to this second question should be, "Yes and no."
(3) "Were there bankrupts before the financial institutions of the West-
ern world were developed?"
If the question is taken in a literal sense, the only acceptable answer must
be no. For here the allusion to man-made constructions (institutions rather
than developed theory) is uncontroversial: "Bankrupt" (applied to some-
one judged insolvent on petition to a court of law) had no application
before the requisite legal procedures had come into existence. A positive
answer to the question would need to take the tortuously counterfactual
form of: "If there had been the corresponding legal institutions (say in
1066), such-and-such a person would have been judged a bankrupt if the
requisite petitions had been lodged."
(4) "Did the view of Mount Everest from a point one hundred feet above
its summit exist before anybody had seen that view?"
An affirmative answer can be accepted only in the counterfactual sense
proposed in the last paragraph: "If anybody had been in a position to view
the mountain from the point specified, it would have looked as it does now
from a plane flying overhead (i.e., the view has not changed)." But if we
agree, we should reject the reifying mythology of the unseen view, "there
all the time" and available for inspection like some ethereal emanation.
The notion of a "view" implicates human beings as possible perceivers
(though not as the creators and subjects of legal institutions, as in the last
case): It is logically necessary that a view can be seen (viewed). Now, when
a certain view is actually seen, that is a fact about the mountain as well as
about the viewer - about a world that includes both. It is objectively true,
not a matter of mere convention or whim, that the view of Everest from
such-and-such a point has such-and-such features.
(5) Did the slow-motion appearance of a galloping horse exist before the
invention of cinematography?
Here the "view" is necessarily mediated by a man-made instrument
(though this might cease to be true if some mutant children were born with
the power to see "slow motion" with one eye). And yet what is seen in a
slow-motion film becomes a part of the world once it is seen.
The last example comes the closest to what I originally had in mind by
the strong creativity thesis. If some metaphors are what might be called
"cognitive instruments," indispensable for perceiving connections that,
once perceived, are then truly present, the case for the thesis would be
made out. Do metaphors ever function as such cognitive instruments? I
believe so. When I first thought of Nixon as "an image surrounding a
vacuum," the verbal formulation was necessary to my seeing him in this

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38 MAX BLACK
way. Subsequently, certain kinetic and visual images have come to serve as
surrogates for the original verbal formulation, which still controls the sen-
sory imagery and remains available for ready reafflrmation.
For such reasons as this, I still wish to contend that some metaphors
enable us to see aspects of reality that the metaphor's production helps to
constitute. But that is no longer surprising if one believes that the world is
necessarily a world under a certain description - or a world seen from a
certain perspective. Some metaphors can create such a perspective.

Can a metaphorical statement ever reveal "how things are"?

In the last section, my attention was fixed upon the creative or productive
aspects of generative metaphors, in virtue of which they can sometimes
function as cognitive instruments through which their users can achieve
novel views of a domain of reference. But a view, however mediated, must
be a view of something: My task here is to make some suggestions about
what that "something" is and how far its possession can yield insight about
"how things are."
I have chosen the unpretentious formula, "how things are," in order to
avoid the fixation of a number of writers who discuss the same topic under
the rubric, "Can metaphorical statements be true?"11 Their strategy seems
to me misguided and liable to induce distortion by focusing exclusively
upon that special connection between statement and reality that we signal
by the attribution of truth value. In ordinary language, the epithet "true"
has more restricted uses than philosophers usually recognize. It is most
uncontroversially appropriate in situations where the prime purpose is to
state a "fact," that is, where the fact-stating statement in question is associ-
ated with some accepted procedure for verification or confirmation: A
witness who swears to "tell the truth and nothing but the truth" is expected
to "speak plainly," that is, to eschew figurative language, and commits
himself not only to refrain from lying, but also to abstain from producing
probability statements, generalizations, explanations, and interpretations
of actions (though some of these excluded types of statements may in other
contexts, for example, those of scientific inquiry, be properly judged true
or false). In such fact-stating uses, the concepts of truth and falsity are
closely associated with such semantic paronyms as "lying," "believing,"
"knowing," "evidence," "contradiction," and others. The relevant linguis-
tic subpractice (or Sprachspiel, as Wittgenstein would call it) characteristi-
cally assumes agreement about ways of checking upon what is being said,
and about ways of contesting or qualifying such sayings.
Hence, one way to recognize that we are in this domain of language use is
to consider whether supplementary questions such as, "Are you perhaps
lying?", "What's the evidence?", "How do you know?", "Aren't you con-
tradicting what you said a moment ago?", and the like are in order. With

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 More about metaphor 39
such considerations in mind, we can readily dismiss the question about
whether metaphorical statements have truth values. If somebody urges
that, "Nixon is an image surrounding a vacuum," it would be inept to ask
soberly whether the speaker knew that to be so, or how he came to know it,
or how we could check on the allegation, or whether he was saying some-
thing consistent with his previous assertion that Nixon was a shopkeeper.
Such supplementary moves are never appropriate to any metaphorical
statements except those degenerately "decorative" or expendable ones in
which the metaphorical focus can be replaced by some literal equivalence.
It is a violation of philosophical grammar to assign either truth or falsity to
strong metaphors.
What lies behind the desire to stretch "true" to fit some such cases (as
when somebody might quite intelligibly respond to the Nixon metaphor by
saying, "How true!") is a recognition that an emphatic, indispensable meta-
phor does not belong to the realm of fiction, and is not merely being used,
as some writers allege, for some mysterious aesthetic effect, but really does
say something (Nixon, if we are not mistaken, is indeed what he is meta-
phorically said to be).
Such recognition of what might be called the representational aspect of a
strong metaphor can be accommodated by recalling other familiar devices
for representing "how things are" that cannot be assimilated to "statements
of fact." Charts and maps, graphs and pictorial diagrams, photographs and
"realistic" paintings, and above all models, are familiar cognitive devices
for showing "how things are," devices that need not be perceived as mere
substitutes for bundles of statement of fact. In such cases we speak of
correctness and incorrectness, without needing to rely upon those over-
worked epithets, "true" and "false."
This is the clue we need in order to do justice to the cognitive, informa-
tive, and ontologically illuminating aspects of strong metaphors. I have
been presenting in this essay a conception of metaphors which postulates
interactions between two systems, grounded in analogies of structure
(partly created, partly discovered). The imputed isomorphisms can, as we
have seen, be rendered explicit and are then proper subjects for the deter-
mination of appropriateness, faithfulness, partiality, superficiality, and the
like. Metaphors that survive such critical examination can properly be held
to convey, in indispensable fashion, insight into the systems to which they
refer. In this way, they can, and sometimes do, generate insight about "how
things are" in reality.

NOTES
The present paper is a slightly modified version of one appearing under the same
title in Dialectica, Vol. 31, Fasc. 3-4. 1977, pp. 43-57. I wish to thank the
publishers of Dialectica for granting permission to reprint it.

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40 MAX BLACK
1 This suggestion is sometimes attributed to Michel Breal (1899). See his Essai, p.
115. But the subject he called "infini" was the special one of the influence of
metaphors upon the extension and renewal of a standard lexicon, of which he
provides numerous illustrations.
2 Richards says that this "can be shown by mere observation."
3 It might be thought puzzling that while the act of producing a metaphorical
statement is a datable event, its semantic content can be described, referred to,
and discussed at any time: consequently, what by definition seems to be subjec-
tive, as produced by a particular speaker or thinker, has an import, as one might
say, that is sufficiently stable or objective - in spite of violating the background
linguistic conventions to be available for subsequent analysis, interpretation,
and criticism. But is this really more puzzling than the fact that what a tennis
player did in his last serve can be talked about (more or less) at any subsequent
time?
4 For this reason, my analogy of "epichess" may be somewhat misleading. For in
that game, there was a "super-rule" of sorts that determined how and when the
rules of ordinary chess might be violated. In view of what looks like the essential
lawlessness of metaphorical transgression, I am less sanguine than other writers
about the prospects of treating the production of a metaphorical statement as a
speech act in Austin's sense. I, too, wish to attend particularly to what a meta-
phor user is doing and what he expects his auditor to do. But I see little profit in
modeling this primal situation on that of a promise giver (Austin's paradigm
case), where the consequences of the performative statement are determined by
a speech community's conventions.
5 To these might be added the following optional implications, that would readily
occur to somebody familiar with game theory, though not to a layman:
(G4) There is no rational procedure for winning in a single play.
(G5) A "maximin" strategy (playing to minimize possible losses) may, though
controversially, be considered rational.
(G6) Playing a long-run "mixed strategy" (alternating available moves ran-
domly but in a predetermined frequency) is (again, controversially) a
"solution."
These further implications would, of course, strengthen the metaphor and
heighten its interest.
6 This conception might, accordingly, be regarded as a generalization of S. J.
Brown's view of metaphor as an "analogy between . . . two relations" (p. 71). I
differ from him in admitting any number of predicates and relations in iso-
morphic correlation - and in laying less stress than he does upon analogy, that
tantalizingly suggestive but obscure notion.
7 In later writing, he called his view the "Revised Verbal Opposition Theory"
(Beardsley, 1962, passim). The preferred later title indicates his interest in ex-
plaining the supposed "tension between the subject and the modifier by which
we are alerted to something special, odd and startling in the combination" (p.
285). Here, he has in mind what would be an essential and not merely a diagnos-
tic feature of metaphor.
8 This is an adaptation of an example used by Binkley (1974). See also Ted Cohen
(1976) which also contains many counterexamples to Beardsley's thesis.

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 More about metaphor 41

9 According to Oakeshott (1959), all "poetic imagining" (as in the use of indis-
pensable metaphors) is concerned with "fictions," which would be radically
misconstrued as "contributions to an enquiry into the nature of the real world."
He adds: "When it is said that poetic imagining is 'seeing things as they really
are' . . . we seem to have been inveigled back into a world composed, not of
images but of cows and cornfields" (pp. 45-6). Contrast with this Wallace
Stevens's (1957) dictum: "Metaphor creates a new reality from which the origi-
nal appears to be unreal" (p. 169).
10 For which, see John Whatley's (1961) illuminating essay. I agree with him that,
"To say, as philosophers sometimes at least imply, that 'A is like ET designates a
'similarity relation' tends to group like-statements to statements of physical,
temporal and other purely objective relationships" (p. 112). On the whole,
Whatley tends to stress nonobjective uses of "like"; but he also says of some
uses that, "There is, in all but peculiar circumstances, some very definite sense
in which these resemblances must correspond to fact" (p. 113).
11 Unsurprisingly, a notable exception is Austin (1961), who says: "We become
obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed
with 'freedom' when discussing conduct . . . Not merely is it jejune to suppose
that all a statement aims to be is 'true', but it may further be questioned
whether every 'statement' does aim to be true at all. The principle of Logic,
that 'Every proposition must be true or false', has too long operated as the
simplest, most persuasive and most pervasive form of the descriptive fallacy"
(pp. 98-9).

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