Notes on the Logic of Simile, Metaphor and Analogy
Joseph Margolis · American Speech · 1957
THE DISCUSSION of simile, metaphor, and analogy suffers from a number of well-worn clich6s and misleading generalizations. One usually hears that metaphors may be converted into similes and similes into metaphors; this is not always so. Similes are grouped together whether open or closed, though these may behave in quite different ways. Analogies are frequently defined as extensive closed similes, but the fact is that not all analogies are similes and closed similes may be said to include more than analogies. Elementary distinctions, therefore, need still to be made about these concepts. The following remarks, however, are confined to their logical features only, leaving aside their proper rhetorical values. Each of the terms-simile, metaphor, analogy-is actually made to serve for somewhat heterogeneous items. I do not include here obvious errors in labeling, as for example in calling the comparison 'She is as fair as my sister' a simile. But what passes for simile, metaphor, and analogy usually have many important differences which cannot be made clear unless we ask for a translation into literal statements (as far as this is possible) of particular figurative expressions. Let me offer an array of sentences that may lead us into the puzzles: She has a heart of stone; Her heart is like stone; Her heart is as hard as stone; Her hard heart resists pleading just as hard stone resists hammering. The first is a metaphor; the second, an open simile; the third, a closed simile; the fourth, a simile closed in a somewhat different manner from the third. But now, what are their differences? The first makes no explicit comparison but attributes a property explicitly to something. We understand this to be intended figuratively; that is, we understand that the expression taken literally is false. And if we wish to exhibit the meaning and cogency of the metaphor, we supply in effect a corresponding simile for analysis (e.g., 'Her heart is like stone' for 'She has a heart of stone'). Of the simile, we say that two essentially unlike things are explicitly compared. Again our usage is figurative, and we are to understand that, though some likeness is suggested between the two, the likeness is not literally intended. Hence, also, a metaphor is said to entail an implicit simile, and in translating a simile into appropriate literal statements we mean at the same time to translate the corresponding metaphor. So far, similes and their corresponding metaphors may reasonably be viewed