The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor

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The Semeiosis
of Poetic Metaphor
title: The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor Peirce Studies ; No. 4

author: Haley, Michael C.
publisher: Indiana University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0253351790
print isbn13: 9780253351791
ebook isbn13: 9780585001098
language: English
subject Metaphor, Semiotics, Peirce, Charles S.--(Charles Sanders),--
1839-1914.
publication date: 1988
lcc: P99.4.M48H35 1988eb
ddc: 808/.00141
subject: Metaphor, Semiotics, Peirce, Charles S.--(Charles Sanders),--
1839-1914.
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Peirce Studies
Number 4
Kenneth Laine Ketner, general editor
Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas
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THE SEMEIOSIS
OF POETIC METAPHOR
MICHAEL CABOT HALEY
Indiana University Press

Bloomington and Indianapolis
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©1988 by Michael Cabot Haley
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this
prohibition.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haley, Michael C.
The semeiosis of poetic metaphor.
(Pierce studies; no. 4)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Metaphor. 2. Semiotics. 3. Peirce, Charles S.
(Charles Sanders), 1839-1914. I. Title. II. Series.
P99.4.M48H35 1988 808'.00141 87-46087
ISBN 0-253-35179-0
1 2 3 4 5 92 91 90 89 88
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The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea. The soul does for the idea just what the cellulose
does for the beauty of the rose; that is to say, it affords it opportunity.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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CONTENTS
ABBREVIATIONS ix
PREFACE xi
Introduction 3
I. Through the Peircean Telescope:Metaphor as Symbol, Index, and Icon 8
II. Under the Peircean Microscope:Metaphor as Image, Diagram, and
Metaicon 19
III. Focus Interpretation: Metaphoric Possibility as Firstness 47
IV. Focus Interpretation: Peircean Hypoicons in Poetry 77
V. Vehicle Interpretation: The Peircean Index in Poetic Metaphor 97
VI. Vehicle Interpretation: The Index of Figural Displacement 116
VII. Metaphoric Growth 141
REFERENCES 170
INDEX 174
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ABBREVIATIONS
CP Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 1935, 1958. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. References by vol. and paragraph number.
CB A Comprehensive Bibliography of the Published Works of Charles Sanders
Peirce. 1986. 2nd ed., revised, by Kenneth Laine Ketner. Bowling Green, OH:
Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University. References
by publication number (in CB) and page number (in original source).
NEM The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce. 1976. Ed. by Carolyn
Eisele. The Hague: Mouton. References by vol. and page number.
PW Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and
Victoria Lady Welby. 1977. Ed. by Charles S. Hardwick. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
W Writings of Charles S. Peirce. 1982, 1984, 1986. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. References by vol. and page number.
MS Peirce Manuscripts as numbered in Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of
Charles S. Peirce. 1967. Ed. by R. S. Robin. Amherst: University of Mass. Press.
Page numbers as stamped by Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, Texas Tech
University.
O.E.DCompact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 1971. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Reference by page number.
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PREFACE
As late as 1984, when I enrolled in Michael Shapiro's summer seminar, "Semiotic Perspectives on Linguistics and Verbal Art,"
the term semeosis was entirely new to me. Before that summer, I had barely heard the name of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-
1914), whose general theory of signs (semeiotic, following his preferred spelling as noted by Fisch, 1978: 32) has endowed the
word semeiosis with far-reaching significance for a growing body of scholars in various disciplines. To the many contemporary
disciples of Peirce who have devoted the greater part of their lifetimes to the careful study of his thought, it must seem
presumptuous for a newcomer, offering his first effort in the field, to entitle it The Semeiosis of Anything At All, let alone of
Poetic Metaphor.
Despite its title, however, this book does not pretend either to present the total picture of Peirce's semeiotic or to exhaust its
manifold relevance to the study of metaphor. It cannot claim even to treat everything Peirce may have written directly on the
topic of metaphor. The reason it cannot make that claim is worth noting for those unfamiliar with the magnitude of Peirce's
work: Despite the eight volumes of his Collected Papers, the four volumes of his New Elements of Mathematics, the three
volumes now available of the projected twenty volumes of (selected) chronological Writings, plus several other collections, not
to mention the surprising quantity of material Peirce published during his own lifetime (as amplified by Kenneth Ketner in the
1986 Comprehensive Bibliography, i-iii, and requiring over 150 accompanying microfiche to reproduce, the equivalent of some
twenty-four volumes)despite this multitude of published materials, much of what Peirce wrote still remains in the form of
unpublished manuscripts. The editors of the Peirce Edition Project estimate that a complete printing of the manuscripts Peirce
left unpublished at his death would require an additional eighty volumes (W 1: xi). My sampling of this huge body of material,
particularly of the unpublished manuscripts and of those earlier publications available on fiche, has been "selective" at best.
Add to the prolixity of Peirce's writing his interdisciplinary (sometimes downright digressive, though always seminal) grafting
and crosspollinating of subject matter, and you will have some idea of what one is up against in asking to know Peirce's
thoughts on any single topic. Peirce was almost as likely to say something profound about metaphor, for instance, while
lecturing on mathematical or chemical notation as he was after having promised to talk about his favorite poets.
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Thus my objective is not to present the final word on Peirce's conception of metaphor (which would be a rather "Un-Peircean"
thing to try in any event), but to present my own rediscovery of metaphor from the fresh perspective of a Peircean semeiotic.
After all, the principal benefit to me in my own encounter with Peirce has been a reawakening of fascination with figurative
language. For several years before Shapiro's seminar, my interest in this subject had lain dormant, abandoned along with my
earlier efforts to understand some of the more ineffable dimensions of metaphor (its creativity, for instance) from the limited
perspective of a Chomskian grammar, which is bound to make metaphor appear as "deviant" (albeit in a non-pejorative sense).
Nor is it my purpose here to engage in "transformational grammar bashing," as seems fashionable in some circles these days, for
I have come to believe that no merely linguistic theory can do justice to metaphor, and that, above all else, is the revelation to
me of Peirce's semeiotic.
This Peircean perspective, in short, was for me like a powerful telescope, trained on metaphor. Weary of studying moon dust
under a Chomskian microscope, I wanted at last to see the moon. (Given these circumstances, what astronomer would not
forgive a few undisciplined excesses committed by a pupil newly converted from mineralogy?)
In any case, readers who desire a greater facility with the sophisticated instrumentation of Peirce's "telescope" itself will have to
be referred to other sources. To some extent, I will have to hope that my reader is already familiar with helpful works like the
following: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce by James Feibleman (1970); Sight, Sound, and Sense edited
by Thomas Sebeok (1978; see especially Max Fisch's "Peirce's General Theory of Signs," 31-70); The Sense of Grammar:
Language as Semeiotic, by Michael Shapiro (1983), as well as his other works with Marianne Shapiro having to do with tropes,
collected in Figuration in Verbal Art (1988); most recently (1985), Christopher Hookway's Peirce; and of course the previous
volumes in this Peirce Studies Series (Peirce's Conception of God by Donna Orange, 1984, number two in this series, has been
particularly helpful and stimulating to me).
If the Peirce literature is ponderous, whole libraries might be devoted to the literature on metaphor. Early in the present
undertaking, I recalled (and resolved to avoid) the feelings of utter helplessness I had experienced in the mid1970s when,
preparing a dissertation on the subject, I tried to tackle just the literature surveyed in Warren Shibles's 1971 Metaphor: An
Annotated Bibliography and Histoy. Without Shibles's help, the task would have been hopeless for me then and, quite frankly, is
hopeless for me now, especially in view of the tremendous output on the subject in the last twenty-five years. There is, however,
more help available: In the final section of her Metaphor Reexamined (1984),
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Liselotte Gumpel offers what amounts to an encyclopedia of the work on metaphor since Aristotle. Although it is unduly
polemical for my taste, her compendium is even in that respect entirely representative of the vast body of scholarship it surveys.
Her book also brings Peirce's semeiotic to bear on metaphor, as does the work of Umberto Eco on the subject (1979, 1984),
although in both cases these uses of Peirce are somewhat at odds with my own.
On that point, I want to make it clear that there will be no systematic attempt in this study to align it with or against other
theories of metaphor, or even to take account of what all the other theories are. If, as Peirce's version of Pragmaticism holds, a
Final Opinion is the consensus we approach in the fullness of time after sufficient consideration shall have been given to a
question by a society of inquirers, then with respect to the question of metaphor, we are hardly ready for any ''final
summations." Furthermore, I believe that metaphor is so fundamental a cognitive operation (see for example Earl Mac Cormac's
A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, 1985) that descriptions of metaphor are bound to differ as radically as do the ways in which
we think about thinking. I see little practical advantage, then, at least given my admittedly narrow objectives, for attempting any
discussion that resembles a "penultimate statement" of the current state of scholarship on the subject before attempting to make
another advance into the territories. I think most serious students of metaphor have known all along that they could make little
more than a "foray" into this field. At least I strongly feel that way about my own work, so I will notice the work of others only
when, in stumbling across the trails they have already blazed, I find the going easier in that direction for a while, or else find the
reasons clearer for going in a different direction.
Certainly, though, there would have been no going anywhere at all without the help of many friends. This study was made
possible by grants from the University of Alaska Anchorage and the National Endowment for the Humanities (Summer Seminar
for College Teachers, Princeton University, 1984). I wish to thank both universities and especially the Endowment for their
support, as well as the other members of the Seminar for their stimulation, criticism, and advice.
A special thanks goes to Gloria Collins, my graduate assistant under a University of Alaska Faculty Development Grant in 1985.
Her suggestions about style (oh that sharp red pencil!), her independent research discoveries, and the stimulating dialogue she
brought to the project have all been extremely valuable to me in revising this work.
At Indiana University Press, Mary Jane Gormley's careful and sensitive editing reached far beyond style to the substance of this
book, and her artwork captured the spirit of Peirce for me.
I am grateful to Tom Short, Ken Ketner, and Michael Shapiro for reading
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my work in progress and offering insightful criticism, encouragement, and constructive suggestions for its improvement,
particularly in the area of its Peirce content. Neither they, nor Peirce, would agree with everything in my final version, and none
of them should be held responsible for whatever errors are sure to be in it.
Ken Ketner deserves my additional gratitude for his infinite patience but vigorous "devil's advocacy" as my editor and editor of
Peirce Studies. He made available to me the facilities and resources of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, of which he is
the director, at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, as well as the hospitality of his home during my Peirce manuscript research.
Most of all, I am deeply thankful to Michael Shapiro, who brought me to Peirce. His writings about Peirce, and his ongoing
efforts to found a Peircean linguistics, made Peirce accessible to me. His own work with metaphor, in collaboration with
Marianne Shapiro, inspired this study and stimulated every development in its growth. Right up to my submission deadline,
Michael was responding to my queries with provocative insights and suggestions. He changed my approach to literature and
linguistics; he changed my approach to my students of literature and linguisticsby showing me, in his own example, how one
can become a great teacher by exhibiting the openness and enthusiasm and curiosity of a serious student.
Finally, thanks to the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University, and the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, Texas Tech
University, for permission to quote from the Peirce manuscripts.
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The Semeiosis
of Poetic Metaphor

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INTRODUCTION
Metaphoric truth is the primary substance of the poetic imagination. A good metaphor is not merely a clever embellishment of
the poet's vision; it is often the only precise embodiment of that vision. Nor is metaphor a riddle to be solved, a semantic
obstacle to be leapt over, before the poem's meaning can be discovered; it is itself a solution, a leap, a meaning, and a discovery.
As Robert Weiman has put it (1974: 149-150):
metaphor is neither an autonomous nor an ornamental aspect of poetry but forms the very core and center of that poetic
statement by which man as a social animal imaginatively comprehends his relation to time and space and, above all, to the
world around him.
Archibald MacLeish may have had the truth of tacit metaphor in mind when he wrote ("Ars Poetica"): "A poem should not
mean/ But be." Even those forms of poetry which, like the haiku, deliberately avoid ''figurative language" in preference to literal
imagery usually turn upon some sort of metaphorical suggestion. Consider this simple example:
One green shoot of rice,
Too early in the paddy,
Bending under ice.
The image, while literal in itself, is nonetheless suggestive of a correspondence to something beyond the rice paddy. It is thus
part of a tacit metaphor, the other part or parts of which must be discovered by the reader. This is not to say that a reader must
consciously stipulate what the other parts are-as, for instance, saying that the shoot of rice is a metaphor for 'youth" and that the
ice is a metaphor for "unyielding tradition" or "old age." On the contrary, the "otherness" suggested by the image may-in fact
should, in such cases-remain just that, a subliminal suggestion, an overtone of possible correspondences as opposed to an
explicit correspondence.
This subliminal character of the "otherness" in poetic imagery often produces the sensation of enjoying an image "for its own
sake alone." However, to my mind at least, that is not a complete or satisfactory account of such imagery. Any image,
graphically depicted, could be enjoyed for its own sake; but the images of a successful poem are not just any images, nor does
their real power reside (despite the protestations of many successful poets) in the vividness of the images' sensory detail. In the
above example, for instance, the image is decidedly unvivid, even ambiguous: Is the rice shoot bending beneath a sheet of ice
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the surface of the rice paddy water, or is it bowed by the weight of ice droplets attached to its stalk? We cannot say which. Nor
do we need to say, for whatever interest the image holds for us lies not in its vividness but in its juxtapositions of oppositesthe
green tender shoot and the heavy inimical ice, the age-old situational irony of the struggle between contiguous seasons, winter
and spring. It is precisely the tensions of such juxtapositions in haiku generally that invite the reader to feel, if not to
intellectualize, a metaphorical correspondence.
Viewed in this way, metaphor is both an extension and a concentration of quite ordinary thought processes. I. A. Richards wrote
(1938: 48-49):
Thinking is radically metaphoric. Linkage by analogy is its constituent law or principle, its causal nexus, since meaning
only arises through the causal contexts by which a sign stands for (takes the place of) an instance of a sort. To think of
anything is to take it as of a sort . . . and that "as" brings in (openly or in disguise) the analogy, the parallel, the
metaphoric grapple or ground or grasp or draw by which the mind takes hold. It takes no hold if there is nothing for it to
haul from, for its thinking is the haul, the attraction of likes.
To be sure, there are important differences between poetic metaphor and the analogical quality of ordinary cognition, but the
differencesas I have argued elsewhere (1980: 4-20, 140-142)are mainly differences of degree, not of kind. The poet possesses no
process of perception, comparison, or abstraction not also available to the nonpoet (otherwise, how could the nonpoet understand
poetry?). It is rather the poet's radical extension (in degree) and compression (in time or space) of universal semeiotic functions
which render the poetic imagination effectively extraordinary. The difference between ordinary analogical thought and poetic
metaphor, to borrow Chomsky's terms (1972; 1975), is a matter of performance (use of knowledge) rather than of competence
(kind of knowledge).
I believe, however, that Chomsky's notion of merely linguistic competence is not adequate to cover the full range of semeiosis in
poetic metaphor; perhaps the difference is best stated in the terms of Charles Sanders Peirce: Everything in the universe is at
least potentially a sign of something else (CP 5.448n). I would suggest that the poets among us are those who are most sensitive
to this potentiality in general, and in particular to those possible sign/object correspondences which are rarely noticed by the rest
of us until after the poets have uncovered or suggested them. Nevertheless, once revealed in an apt metaphor, such a rare poetic
correspondence, albeit novel, typically strikes even the nonpoet as thoroughly natural and correct.
Whether or not this proposition is accurate, it is no trivial notion, for it implies that the aesthetics and semantics of poetic
metaphor are not the exclusive nor privileged province of the literary scholar. Of course, many dimensions of poetrythose which
obtain from cumulative literary history and traditionare best handled by the trained litterateur, who is sensitive to the subtleties
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allusion, form, prosody, and so forth. Yet the dimension of poetic metaphor obtains not primarily from literary tradition but from
a much larger, more fundamental, and more universal set of laws creating and governing the entire process of human semeiosis.
I am suggesting that poetic metaphor is a radically concentrated microcosm of that universal and teleological process by which
all signs are discovered and interpreted. It is thus best understood in relation to that larger universe of signs.
No one has gone further towards describing the laws, the plenitude, or the diversity of signs in the universe than has Charles
Sanders Peirce. (See suggested readings in the preface.) His semeiotic presents a theory of meaning and interpretation that
encompasses the literal macrocosm, wherein every entity, real or ideal, is potentially a sign, including the human entity. "When
we think, then, we ourselves . . . appear as a sign," wrote Peirce (CP 5.383). "Accordingly, . . . we ought to say that we are in
thought and not that thoughts are in us" (CP5.289 n. 1). Tom Short has pointed out, in a different connection, that the human
mind in Peirce's theory is but one example of universal semeiosis (1981b: 203). As my colleague in Alaska, J. J. Liszka, has put
it, "Consciousness does not constitute semiotic processes; it is a synthesizer but a part of a more comprehensive synthesis"
(1980: 303).
Peirce uncovers in this universal synthesis a rich profusion of possible sign types, one precisely distinguished from another
(though they function together in actual signs) through varied and detailed perspectives: Symbols, Indices, Icons, Hypoicons, to
name but a few which present an immediate suggestibility for metaphor study. Nor is this variegation of sign species a mere
proliferation of terminology for its own impressive sake; at every level the distinctions are aligned in keeping with Peirce's
overarching phenomenology: the three Categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness which subsume, respectively,
Possibility, Actuality, and Law. This phenomenology therefore parallels a sweeping ontology which spans and accommodates
everything from Platonic idealities to social conventions. This it does without accepting the reality of anything and everything
imaginable to the human fancy; quite to the contrary, Peirce's theory of being develops a brand of philosophical realism which,
combined with his pragmaticism and common-sensism, offers a major corrective to the abuses of extreme subjectivism and
solipsism which too often characterize modern literary interpretation. Peirce explained to Lady Welby, "Each Sign must have its
peculiar Interpretability before it gets any Interpreter" (PW 111, emphasis added).
Most important, however, is Peirce's insistence that the interpretation of a sign's meaning must not proceed on the simplistic
notion that the "meaning" is, monistically, the sign's object, or even merely a dualistic relation between the sign and its object,
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its subject (signifier or interpreter). Rather, meaning for Peirce was a triadic relation between Sign, Object, and Interpretant, the
latter being "the proper significate outcome of a sign" (CP 5.473). His notion of semeiosis is that it occurs in subtle stages which
are organically receptive to a wide range of what Peirce called Dynamic Interpretants in their evolutionary tendency towards the
ideal of a Final Interpretant in the indefinite future. As indicated in my preface, the description of how the full process of this
semeiosis might be used to delineate an aesthetics, semantics, and hermeneutics of poetic metaphor is beyond the scope of this
study. But a mere survey of names Peirce assigned to the kinds of interpretation (the Emotional, the Energetic, the Logical
Interpretant) along with his stages of interpretation (the Immediate, the Dynamic, and the Final Interpretant)each systematically
related to the properties of the Sign/Object relation itselfought to suggest the manifold possibilities of his theory for an
organically holistic and rigorously analytical theory of poetic metaphor.
Intended as a preliminary step toward the development of such a theory of metaphor, this study applies only Peirce's most
famous trichotomy of sign types (the Symbol, the Index, and the Icon), as well as his seldom treated trichotomy of Hypoicons,
to some frequently ignored semantic and aesthetic features of poetic metaphor. Though Peirce apparently wrote precious little
about metaphor per se, the field of metaphor furnishes an especially rich domain in which to prospect with Peirce's tools, for
perhaps no other aspect of language and of creative literature arouses such interest in meaning and such controversy over the
prerogatives of interpretation as does poetic metaphor.
My chief concerns, then, are these:
1. What is Peirce's general conception of metaphor, and how might a Peircean semeiotic be used to clarify and amplify the
essential defining conditions of metaphor?
2. In terms of these conditions, how might true metaphor be distinguished from false, and poetic from conversational?
3. How might these conditions, cast in a Peircean mold, be used to suggest the scope and range of possible interpretations of
poetic metaphor?
4. How might an understanding of poetic semeiosis, especially in light of a Peircean metaphysics, enrich our appreciation of the
special thematic and aesthetic functions of poetic metaphor within the meaning and art of a literary work as a whole?
5. How might a Peircean semeiotic of metaphor illuminate the process and result of growth in language, literature, meaning, and
human cognition itself?
I begin in chapter 1 by sketching my own global definition of metaphor in light of the Peircean semeiotic. This "telescopic" view
of metaphor as Peircean Symbol, Index, and Icon provides the general framework for the rest of the

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book. In chapter 2, the focus narrows to a "microscopic" inspection of metaphor's Iconic character in particular, especially as
given in Peirce's Hypoicons. There I also take up Peirce's other specific uses of the term "metaphor," as well as some of his own
most revealing figural conceptions of semeiotic, showing the evolution of his views on figurative language and suggesting some
further extensions from that evolution. In chapter 3, I develop a doctrine of metaphorical possibilityagain with main focus on the
Iconloosely based upon Peirce's notion of Firstness and his philosophical realism. Chapter 4 shows how this reading of the
Peircean Icon (as developed in chapters 2 and 3) applies to actual examples of poetic metaphor. In chapters 5 and 6, I turn to the
Peircean Index, developing from it and from some leading suggestions in Peirce's Theory of Being my notion of interactive
"figural displacement" in poetic metaphor. Finally, chapter 7 explores what all of the above might suggest about the important
place and function of metaphor in the growth of Symbols.

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I.
THROUGH THE PEIRCEAN
TELESCOPE
METAPHOR AS SYMBOL, INDEX,
AND ICON
Definitions of metaphor vary widely and invariably excite debate. This is no surprise when we consider how much is at stake in
such a definition. Metaphor is so central an element of poetry, of language, of the learning process, and of meaning itself, that
we cannot define it without delimiting our views in almost every field of human inquiry. Descriptions of metaphor are bound to
differ as radically as do theories of meaning and thought, as well as any and all theories to which notions about meaning and
thought are central.
Nevertheless, three common elements of definition frequently recur in various descriptions of metaphor. Consider the following:
Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else ...
A good metaphor implies the intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
(Aristotle, Poetics, XXI, XXII)
The metaphor . . . is an assignment of a signans to a secondary signatum associated by similarity . . .
with the primary signatum.
(Jakobson 1971: 355)
Metaphor states an equivalence between terms taken from separate domains ...
(Sapir 1977: 4)
[Hypoicons] which represent the representative character of a representamen by
representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors.
(Peirce [italics his]CP 2.277)
To define metaphor for the purposes of this study, I am content to list (Fig. 1.1), and to elaborate upon, what might be
considered the common elements from the above statements.

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Common Elements Corresponding Terms of "Definitions"
1. Similarity "similarity"Aristotle, Jakobson
"equivalence"Sapir
"parallelism"Peirce
2. Duality "something else"Aristotle, Peirce
"secondary"Jakobson
"separate domains"Sapir
3. Cross-predication "giving"Aristotle
"assignment"Jakobson
"states"Sapir
"representing"Peirce
Figure 1.1
These seem to be the crucial elements which can be found in various forms in most definitions of metaphor since Aristotle.
Indeed, the global phenomenon I have in mind when I speak of metaphor is precisely what Gumpel (1984) discards as the
'traditional" and "Neo-Aristotelian" concept of metaphor. As Gumpel herself points out (82, 134), Peirce's description of
metaphor squarely aligns his notion with that of the traditional Aristotelian perspective. For purposes of her own, she chooses to
reject that perspective. For the purposes of this study, on the other hand, I am entirely comfortable with the descriptive elements
suggested by Peirce's formulation, no matter how obviously 'traditional" or "neoAristotelian" they may be. That Peirce follows
Aristotle certainly should not be construed to imply that there is no additional insight to be gained from Peirce's formulation, for
when the elements of his description are considered fully in light of his Categories and his sign trichotomies, they acquire a
manifold new significance for an aesthetics and semantics of metaphor.
In view of my purpose to consider metaphor in connection with Peirce's theories, why not simply adopt Peirce's description of
metaphor above as a working definition, instead of reducing it to a paraphrase with three elements? Peirce's wording, I believe,
does offer a powerful though cryptic suggestion about genuine metaphoricity. Despite my preliminary alignment of the elements
from his wording with traditional definitions, however, I believe that Peirce's formulation should not and cannot be used as a
complete definition, or even a complete Peircean definition, of metaphor. Specifically, I think his intent (at CP 2.277) was to
distinguish the metaphorical icon from other kinds of icons (signs of likeness), not from all signs in general, as a global
definition ought to do. By aligning the elements of Peirce's description with other and more general definitions, I intend only to
suggest that Peirce's formulation of metaphorical iconicity proper is perfectly fitted to, and thus prefigurative of,

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metaphor's other dimensions (namely, the indexical and symbolic). In chapter 2, I will offer a full argument for this reading of
the passage in question. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework for that argument, as well as for the rest of the
book, by sketching the outlines for a global definition of metaphor in the light of Peirce's overall theory of signs.
Moreover, the simple extrapolation of these three conditions allows my definition of metaphor to be more easily aligned with
Peirce's three Categories, as well as with his most famous trichotomy of sign functions, as illustrated in figure 1.2.
Defining Conditions Peircean Category Sign Function
(Subsuming:)
1. Similarity Possibility Iconicity
2. Duality Actuality Indexicality
3. Cross-predication Law Symbolicity
Figure 1.2
The alignment illustrated suggests a number of claims, the full defense and development of which must await subsequent
chapters. For the present, I will offer only a general overview of these claims with a few preliminary comments. First, figure 1.2
suggests that metaphor, because of what it is, and especially poetic metaphor, brings together in one "microcosm" all the
phenomena of Peirce's ontological 'macrocosm." Second, the alignment in figure 1.2 implies that poetic metaphor in particular
represents a perfect blending of all three of Peirce's most famous sign functions. Peirce held that all these functions must be
present to some degree in any "naturally fit" or "sufficiently complete" sign (CP 2.295; NEM 4:256); poetic metaphor is an
example par excellence of the complete or fit sign, I will argue, for though its ground is iconic, this icon is embedded within an
exceptionally powerful interactive index endowing the metaphor with extraordinary potentials for symbolic growth. (See also
Jakobson 1971: 349 on blending of sign functions.)
Further, the alignment of Similarity with Possibility is meant to assert that the 'similarity" between the two (or more) elements
of a genuine poetic metaphor is not at all the fabrication of the poet. Rather, the relation of terms in the metaphor is a linguistic
actualizationa dynamic bringing into sharp existential focusof the real and positive, albeit abstract, quality the two referents
share. This 'quality' takes its distinctive nature, in Peircean terms, from the nature of real possibility or potentiality, not from the
merely verbal mechanism which calls attention to it. In other words, the claim is that genuine poetic metaphorical similarity is a
creative discovery, not a creation, by the poet. A full defense of this claim will be offered in chapters 2 and 3.
Next, the parallel between Duality and Actuality in figure 1.2 is meant to

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imply, as already suggested above, that the 'two-ness" or "double vision" effected by metaphor's dual references is precisely the
necessary and correct embodiment or 'actualization" (in our consciousness) of their similarity. As Peirce would have it, the
similarity between the things compared possesses its own independent reality before the poet brings the two things together in
the metaphor; but until that moment of bringing together, our grasp of their similarity is vague at best. The metaphor's
embodiment of the shared quality in two disparate things at once presents exactly the dyadic concreteness needed to make the
monadic abstraction of the metaphorical possibility forceful and actual to the consciousness. 'For suppose anything," wrote
Peirce, "and there is at once the Idea of something. But this something cannot have any distinct property, unless it be opposed to
something else" (MS 915: 1). Thus, though the Firstness in which the metaphorical similarity is grounded is independently real
before the metaphor is constructed, it does not come into its own special "existence" (CP 6.349) in our minds until it is
actualized, made concrete and precise, by the Secondness of the metaphor's dual reference (as governed by the Thirdness of the
metaphorical predication itself).
What is it about 'duality of reference" which carries this actualizing power? This will be answered more fully in chapter 5, but it
is important to note just here that truly metaphorical 'duality" necessitates tension between the two or more terms juxtaposed in
the metaphor. In other words, the two things compared must not only be similar; they must also be dramatically dissimilar.
Hence the alignment with Peirce's Category of Secondness, subsuming Actuality, which he consistently characterized as the
domain of force and opposition, and as forcing its way into consciousness. Peirce wrote, 'When I feel the sheriff's hand on my
shoulder, I shall begin to have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. .... We have a two-sided consciousness of
effort and resistance" (CP 1.24). There could hardly be a better way of describing how a living poetic metaphor compels
attention. It forces its way into our consciousness because of the dynamic tension, clash, opposition, of the two things the poet
has juxtaposed in a transcending comparison. This sense of semantic tension is at least part of what Ricoeur refers to as the
'event" of metaphor(1977: 98-99). 'Event" is also another term with which Peirce often described the Category of Actuality (CP
1.336). The claim to be developed in chapter 5, then, and a claim often denied in pragmatic linguistic studies, is that semantic
clash is an essential defining condition of poetic metaphor, for that is the condition that actualizes abstract metaphoric truth to
our minds.
The two or more things so opposed and compared in poetic metaphor are not simply suspended in an equilibrium of attraction
and opposition; they interact (see Richards 1936, 1938; Black 1962; Ricoeur 1977). This is basically what I mean by cross-
predication as the third defining condition. The result of cross-

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predication is semantic growth (often on the part of both things juxtaposed, I believe); hence the alignment of cross-predication
with Peirce's Third Category (subsuming Law) in figure 1.2. Peirce consistently related Law, as an instance of Thirdness, to
ideas of change and growth (see Shapiro 1983: 191-192). This growth of new meaning in poetic metaphor may take the form of
a momentary conceptual expansion, by which we provisionally come to see things in a new way within the transitory world of
the poem, or it may effect a permanent creation of new symbolism within the language (Shapiro and Shapiro 1976: 15-21) or
within our world view (Factor 1984: 10-33). In either case, it is this marvelously creative aspect of poetic metaphor which, more
than any other element of poetry, entitles the poet to the name of "maker."
However, a further implication of aligning the cross-predicative function of poetic metaphor with Peirce's notion of Law is that
semantic growth, whether viewed as a transitory conceptual expansion or as the permanent creation of new linguistic, literary, or
cognitive symbols, is guided by a general principle of natural selection. As suggested in the introduction, meaning in general is
fostered and governed by a universal and teleological process of semeiosis, of which human semeiosis, in Peirce's view, is but
one example. (See also Jakobson 1971: 703.) Specifically, I will argue in chapters 2 and 7 that metaphoric growth is guided by a
final cause present in its ultimate iconic typology viewed as an antecedent possibility. Though fortuitous variation plays an
important part in the actualization of this possibility, the growth of poetic meaning is not within the private or purely arbitrary
control of either the individual poet or the reader. As J. Norris Frederick has put it in his Peircean approach to metaphor, "Thus
the foundation of the sign relationship is used, but not made, by the interpreter" (1980: 148). This notion cuts squarely across the
grain of much that is fashionable in literary studies today. It will be developed and defended throughout this study as a principal
theme.
On the basis of the above defining conditions, this study must exclude metonymy, simile, and explicit analogy from
consideration as poetic metaphor, though all three are certainly worthy of inclusion in a more complete theory of figurative
language.
I do acceptJakobson's notion of the "metaphoric and metonymic poles" (1956: 76-82). Metonymy is predominantly a trope
fashioned on a relation of contiguity, whereas metaphor is grounded in similarity (my condition 1, fig. 1.2). While demonstrating
this clearly, Jakobson laments the paucity of studies on metonymy and suggests that metaphor studies may be warped by their
failure to consider the metaphoric pole in relation to the metonymic pole (1956: 82): "The actual bipolarity has been artificially
replaced in these studies by an amputated, unipolar scheme which, strikingly enough, coincides with one of the two aphasic
patterns, namely with the contiguity disorder."

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Perhaps it is the case, then, that this book (or its author) suffers from aphasia, but that is because of its primary focus on ''poetic"
figures, the study of which, Jakobson himself seems to suggest, is naturally "directed chiefly toward metaphor" (82).
Metonymy also most often seems lacking in the sort of "conceptual leap" I find in poetic metaphor (condition 3). As Shapiro
and Shapiro show, metonymy hinges on a mere "shift of reference" without any 'modification in the sense" of the sign used
figuratively (1976: 9-10). It is this "modification of sense," in my view, which gives metaphor the status of the poet's chief tool
as a "maker" and re-maker of symbols. Of course I am prepared to admit that metonymy often underlies metaphor in the process
of linguistic change, as Shapiro and Shapiro show (1976: 21, note Schema C), in the actual generation of metaphor as Eco
shows (1979: chapter 2), or even more broadly in the process of cultural evolution, as Factor shows (1984: 29-33). Thus
metonymy and metaphor may well belong together in the sort of broad historical study which this study does not purport to be.
In no sense am I prepared to admit, however, that the interpretation of a metaphor requires recovering whatever metonymic
origins it may have. Ignoring the relation between metonymy and metaphor is not tantamount to a neglect of metaphor's own
special contiguity condition (juxtaposed duality, condition 2). More of this at chapter 5.
Simile or explicit analogy, on the other hand, I will exclude because I find it somewhat lacking in tension and markedly lacking
in interaction, the second and third conditions of metaphor as I am defining it. Peirce often ignored the difference between
simile and metaphor in his briefest treatments of the latter term, because he was most interested in the iconic character of
metaphor, as we will see in chapter 2; I believe a thorough application of his semeiotic, however, more than justifies an
important distinction between metaphor and simile at the indexical and symbolic levels.
At any rate, there is good reason for making the distinction. In the reading of a simile or explicit analogy, there is only a rather
provisional and accommodative interpretation of a literally translatable similarity condition. As I have already suggested, the
search for such a condition is also an important part of metaphor interpretation. However, as Tanya Reinhart has shown in her
splendid study of "focus interpretation" versus 'vehicle interpretation" (1976: 383402), experienced readers of poetic metaphor
do much more than "translate" the "focus," that is, look for literal similarities; they also pay careful attention to the "vehicle,"
which I believe involves the semantic and aesthetic consequences of tension and interaction between the object, the figural sign,
and the interpretant. Of course, especially novel similes and explicit analogies may also invite appreciation of the "code" as well
as an understanding of the iconic 'message"; but to the extent that they do create an aesthetic interest, they often direct

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it toward the speaker's cleverness or state of mind; the self-consciously provisional way in which such similes and analogies
present themselves to us as tropes encourages that deflection of interest from the poetic vision to the poet. Conversely, metaphor
is more than a clever way of saying that A is "like" B, or that A 'is to" B as C 'is to" D. In an important sense, as Kenneth Burke
has put it, metaphor compels us to see (not just say) A as B (1945: 503-504). Poetic metaphor is the discovery of a real though
transcending connection, not merely the concoction of a provisional and transparent juxtaposition, and it is a discovery which
compels us to admit two truths in one: the truth of the literal similarity (focus) and the accuracy of the figural vehicle.
The alignment in figure 1.2 also indicates a blending of sign functions. Poetic metaphor involves the balanced use of all three
signs in Peirce's most famous trichotomy: the Symbol, the Index, and the Icon. A symbol stands for its object mainly by virtue
of law, which includes, but is not limited to, largely arbitrary convention (CP 2.292-302, 307); an index represents its object by
means of some spatial or causal connection to it, as for example smoke is a sign (mainly an index) of fire (CP 2.248, 285-287);
an icon signifies its object because it resembles it in some way, as a photograph is (principally) an icon of the thing depicted in
the picture (CP 2.276, 279).
All verbal metaphor uses symbols, because most words stand for their objects (physical or merely mental) by linguistic
convention. The reader of a metaphor must of course be aware of the referents (in objective reality or in shared cultural
experience) assigned by such convention to the words of the metaphor in order to understand it. In addition, many poetic
metaphors depend upon the special context or inter-textuality of literature or of a particular genre or tradition in literature; such
metaphors may expect the reader to know the special referents of words as assigned by literary convention. While these
considerations seem obvious, the semantic features attached to words by both linguistic and literary convention interact in some
interesting ways in poetic metaphor's crosspredicative function, by which new configurations of symbolic meaning come into
being and grow in poetry, in literature, in the language, and in human cultural development (chapter 7).
Less obvious is metaphor's general indexical function. Factor (1984) has ably described it in Peircean terms. This indexical
component of metaphor is, in part at least, its clash of dissimilars (hence the alignment with Duality and Actuality in figure 1.2).
Like a red flag, another Peircean example of the Index, the semantic shock of a novel metaphor is what brings it into the
foreground of perception. Or we might say that the figural tension of the metaphor is the indexical "smoke" which "points" (the
first function of any index) to the metaphorical "fire."
That which actually "fires" the metaphor is the poet's introduction of an icon.

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I will take the Peircean Icon in metaphor to be roughly analogous to I. A. Richards's "vehicle" (1936: 89-138). In the simplest
metaphors involving only dual referents, the icon is the "figurative" one which the poet has brought in (via word-symbols which
stand for the referents) as a comparison to the other referent, the literal topic of the metaphor. For instance, in Pascal's metaphor
"Man is a thinking reed," the word man symbolizes humanity, the literal topic, tenor, or object (what the metaphor is about), and
the word reed of course symbolizes our notion of reeds, the figural icon (the referent imaginatively compared to man). It is
important to notice that the semantic tension of metaphor (its index) arises most directly from the introduction of an icon into
the metaphorical complex. Though I am oversimplifying the matter somewhat to do so, here I will borrow Max Black's notion
of "focus" and "frame'' (1962: 27-28). The "frame" is roughly the proposition itself without the word or words used figuratively;
for instance, the frame of Pascal's metaphor would be 'Man is a thinking [_____]." Note that there is nothing particularly odd or
novel or attention-getting about this frame; it is only when the word reed is brought in that we feel any semantic tension. This
tension causes us to "focus," as a first step of interpretation, upon our notion of reeds, the icon. Thus I believe that the poetic
metaphorical index is limited to that special kind of index Peirce talked about as 'an index which forces something to be an icon
. . . or which forces us to regard it as an icon" (NEM 4: 242). Further, the only kind of reliable metaphoric index is the kind that
is caused by the presence, in the frame, of an icon (though not by anything in the icon by itself), as smoke is a reliable index of
fire because it is caused by the presence of fire. Another way of putting it is that meaningful metaphorical tension is that kind of
index which contains an icon, as a photograph reliably "points" to the object represented by its iconic image.
The importance of this observation is simple. If, in the presence of semantic tension, we cannotwith any confidencelocate an
icon (or icons) whose presence in the frame seems to be a focus of the tension among the metaphor's referents, then we cannot
proceed confidently with interpretation. This describes precisely a condition of "false metaphor" or simple anomaly. Imagine, for
instance, that an absurdist "poet" wrote a one-word "metaphor" like 'Squircle!" whose morphemic structure was understood to
be square + circle. Given this linguistic information about the word, we would understand the conventional symbolic referents
of the two morphemes (a circle and a square); we would further recognize as existing between them a state of semantic tension,
very much like that of a metaphorical index, inviting us to look for a figurative interpretation. In the case of 'Squircle!,"
however, this 'looking for an interpretation" would apparently do no good, because (among other reasons) we cannot reliably
locate any iconis it the circle, or is it the square? We cannot distinguish the literal topic from the figural vehicle. Thus we cannot
tell what is being

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talked about or what figurative assertion is being made about it. The same may be said for all pseudo-metaphorical statements
such as the now famous "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" which have all the linguistic marks of poetic metaphor (violation
of selectional restriction and of strict lexical subcategorization, as per Chomsky, 1957 and 1965) but which lack the proper
semeiotic marks of genuine metaphor (an index pointing clearly to an icon).
I must note, however, that all linguistic anomalies can be metaphors, of a sort, given a "rescuing context'; for this reason, every
case of semantic tension should be regarded, initially at least, as a possible metaphoric index. But my point is that semantic
tension does not exist in a good poetic metaphor for its own sake; if that tension does not point us to something we can identify
as an icon (or iconic complex), we find it difficult if not impossible to interpret even the indexical sign. If the tension is to be
granted this status as indexical sign, it must of course "indicate" something, must "point" reliably at something. At what does it
point, and how does it point? Those are the crucial questions. Does it point at everything and nothing (or worse, at itself or its
maker) by turning in all directions in empty semantic space, like one of those "pointing fingers" cut from tin and dangling from
a wire in a pop-art mobile? Or does it point, for example, like the index of an artful photograph, at some clearly identifiable
icon that it contains (see CP 4.447; NEM 4:242)? True, the metaphorical icon need not be a simple picture or image; as I will
show in chapters 2 and 3, the icon-object relation might be quite abstract. Here I only wish to emphasize that the poetic index is
typically "cooperative" in helping us to locate an icon of some sort to build our interpretation upon. Poets generally do not resort
to shocking juxtapositions just to get our attention; they use the metaphoric index to direct our attention to a genuine iconic
relationship which we might otherwise have missed. Further, as we will see in chapters 5 and 6, poets use the patterns of
indexical tension in complex metaphor to shape our perception of iconic truth. They shock us for the sake of truth, shock us
with a linguistic ''lie" that contains a semeiotic truth, with an apparent impossibility that subsumesand requires that we sharpen
our vision ofpossibility.
To conclude, the following steps are a "slow motion" summary of the interdependent blending of Peirce's sign functions in
poetic metaphor as I conceive it. (Items in italics and quotation marks also appear in the schema of figure 1.3 below.)
1. The Symbols (word signs) of the metaphor refer to dual or more objects in disparate semantic domains. The Immediate
Interpretant ("Iim") of this Sign/Object/Object relation is therefore a sense of semantic tension (" ~ ") obtaining from the clash
of the disparate objects. In figure 1.3, this step is represented in the uppermost triangle, linguistic interpretation 1.

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2. The reader forms an Indexical Hypothesis that the semantic tension is meaningfulnamely, that the tension is a Sign,
specifically an Index, indicating some further Object. (In figure 1.3, this Indexical Hypothesis is formalized as "Iim = ~ = Sign:
Index.") The Indexical Hypothesis need not be conscious or formal, of course; it is simply the feelingor the suspicionthat one has
come upon a metaphor.
3. For reasons discussed above, the only reliable Object of a metaphorical Index is an Icon. Therefore, the reader begins to test
the Indexical Hypothesis by searching for an icon among the metaphor's referents. If no icon can be isolated, or if the metaphor's
referents cannot be assigned the roles of icon and object, then the Indexical Hypothesis is denied. Any further interpretation, in
this event, must be totally subjective.
4. If, however, an icon is found, the reader may proceed to interpret the icon in relation to its object, the literal topic. This is
what Reinhart callsfocus interpretation; it is represented in the bottom triangle (2) of figure 1.3. If focus interpretation is
successful, the result is at least one Dynamic Interpretant ("ID1"), the discovery of a literal similarity as the ground of the sign.
(Of course there may be more than one such Dynamic Interpretant.)
5. Successful focus interpretation (step 4 above) now confirms the Indexical Hypothesis (formed in step 2). Thus confirmed as a
genuine Sign having a reliable Object, the Index must now be interpreted in its own right (to be argued in chapter 5). This is
what Reinhart calls vehicle interpretation; in figure 1.3, it is schematized in the medial triangle (3). The result of successful
vehicle interpretation is a second Dynamic Interpretant ("ID2"), an aesthetic sense offigural displacement (chapters 5 and 6).
6. Balanced application of focus and vehicle interpretation leads to semantic growth, the far right triangle (4) in figure 1.3.
Specifically, figural displacement ("ID2") becomes a [S]ign in itself, whose [O]bject is literal similarity ("ID1"), and whose
Final Interpretant ("IF") is metaphoric truth. This is the ideal state of understanding how Iconic Possibility is only what it is in
poetic metaphor by virtue of its embodiment in an evolving figural paradox (Indexical Impossibility). The notion (to be
developed in chapters 5 and 6) is that the Index of semantic tension acquires, in complex poetic metaphor, an iconic force of its
own, and that this force shapes and re-shapes our perception of the (literal) similarity between the original icon and its object.
The implications of this notion for a theory of diachronic linguistic and conceptual growth are explored in chapter 7.
One further note on figure 1.3: The use of triangles is not intended to imply that the Peircean triadic relation (Sign, Object, and
Interpretant) is reducible in actual semeiosis to the dyads of Sign/Object, Sign/Interpretant, and Ob-

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Figure 1.3
ject/Interpretant. Peirce clearly demonstrated that genuine triadic relations are
not reducible to any combination of dyads or monads (see Ketner 1986); and,
as far as I know, Peirce never used a triangle to configure the S-O-I relation.
I use the triangles, instead of Peirce's favored form of existential graphs, for the
sake of clearly isolating what I view as discrete and teleological but irreducible
levels or 'moments" of metaphorical semeiosis.

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II.
UNDER THE PEIRCEAN
MICROSCOPE
METAPHOR AS IMAGE, DIAGRAM,
AND METAICON
In this survey of the Peircean conception of metaphor, let us begin with the full text of a passage cited in chapter 1, namely
Peirce's description of the hypoicons. Just prior to this passage, Peirce explained that a pure icon (a pure resemblance) can only
be a possibility, not an actuality; but an actual sign "may be iconic, that is, may represent its object mainly by its similarity, no
matter what its mode of being" (CP 2.276). Such an iconic sign, which represents its object mainly by resemblance to it, Peirce
named a hypoicon. We may thus think of the term as referring to any actual embodiment of an icon proper. (See Ransdell 1979:
55 and Anderson 1984b: 455-456.) Next Peirce classified the hypoicons:
Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of
simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the
parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative
character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. (CP 2.277)
Despite my earlier provisional alignment (chapter 1) of the elements from this statement about metaphor with the definitions of
metaphor by others, I believe the statement should not be taken as a global definition, or even a complete Peircean definition, of
metaphor. Rather, we should keep in mind that Peirce was setting out here to classify hypoicons, not to define metaphor, and I
believe this classification of metaphor deals explicitly only with the iconic identity of metaphor proper; it just so happens that
the iconic identity of metaphor proper is perfectly fitted to and thus prefigurative of its other dimensions. But these other
dimensionsnamely, the indexical and symbolicare in themselves critically important; they may not have been important to Peirce
in his briefest treatments of metaphor, and they are only tacitly acknowledged here by his use

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of the term hypoicon (which allows that more than pure iconicity is involved), but his semeiotic provides for a combination of
symbolic, indexical, and iconic functions in signs generally (CP 2.295, 5.119; NEM 4: 256). Thus a complete and correct
Peircean definition of metaphor as sign would not be limited to or constrained by this passage. Most important, attempts to pack
into this passage everything that needs to be said about metaphor in light of the Peircean semeiotic invariably distort the passage
and obscure what I believe is its real potentiala provision (though undeveloped here by Peirce) for a deeper understanding of
metaphorical similarity proper, or of metaphorical iconicity in the epitome, we might say.
In order to get a better idea of how I am approaching this passage, consider the following analogy. Suppose we walk into a
room where some sort of social function is going on, with a large number of U.S. servicemen in attendance. You explain to me,
"Those dressed in navy blue uniforms with little white hats are sailors. Those in brown and khaki with polished leather boots
are infantrymen. Those in green camouflage with commando rifles slung over their shoulders are marines." Now, have you
given a complete definition of what a marine is? Of course not. You have distinguished the marines only from the infantrymen
and sailors in the room, not from all persons or roles, and you have done so only with regard to their uniforms and equipment, at
that. True, the green camouflage and commando rifles may indeed furnish a powerful suggestion as to some special attribute of
the (arche)typical marine, but it does not define "marine.
Likewise, Peirce's description of the hypoicons does not furnish a whole definition of metaphor. I believe it does not attempt
such a definition; it only offers a distinction between metaphors and diagrams and images, and that only with regard to their
respective iconic conditions. When Peirce said that the metaphor represents not just the simple quality or analogous structure of
a thing (as with images and diagrams) but instead the "representative character" of a thing, I believe he offered a powerful
suggestion about the kind of similarity which is (arche)typically metaphorical, but he did not define metaphor. For this reason,
with apologies to Peirce for straining his ethics of terminology (see CP 2.219-226; Ketner 1981), I will ultimately wish to
reserve the term "metaphor" in this study to refer to the global (symbolic, indexical, and iconic) definition of the metaphorical
sign as explained in chapter 1, and I will introduce the term metaicon here to refer to what I think Peirce was really talking
about in this passage; that is, only that sort of iconic character which is peculiar to metaphor proper, or to metaphor in its highest
form.
What besides my own view of metaphor justifies my constraining the interpretation of Peirce's words in this way, not to mention
further complicating the matter by introducing a new term? If we take only a quick, preliminary glance

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at the passage (and I must admit that Peirce might very well have been happy with just that), I believe we can see that the
opposite view actually leads to more difficulties if not to total failure. Treated as a global definition and stripped of all its
technical terminology, Peirce's description could be saying, simply: "Metaphor is a symbolic statement that represents one thing
as an icon (image or diagram) of something else." On the surface, this would indeed seem to work nicely. After all, Peirce had
already clearly explained what he meant by hypoicon: an embodied icon, an icon dominating an actual sign of mixed breed.
Perhaps, then, Peirce's "metaphor" is nothing more than any symbolic/indexical assertion of an iconic proposition. For instance,
the whole assertion "My brother John is like a hairy ape" would satisfy this "definition": It is a symbolic/indexical assertion
representing a hairy ape as an icon of my brother John (who would be the "something else'' in the passage on this reading of it).
Then what is wrong with this? Strange as it may sound, I think it is not wrong (as a reading of the passage in question) in its
failure to distinguish metaphor from simile. The example above is of course a simile, not a metaphor, and I have suggested in
chapter 1 that a thorough application of the Peircean semeiotic makes the indexical and symbolic distinctions between (global)
metaphor and simile absolutely crucial. I must admit, however, that Peirce himself, because he was concerned with metaphor
mainly as a kind of likeness, most often tended to ignore this distinction, so let us too ignore the distinction for the present and
admit "My brother John is like a hairy ape" as "metaphor." After all, especially if I am correct that the hypoicon passage
expressly addresses only iconic conditions, then it would be difficult to distinguish between (global) metaphor and simile at this
level, for the simile "John is like an ape" and the metaphor "John is an ape"regarding only the possible similarities between John
and the apeare identical. This passage "fails" in not making that distinction, then, only if we expect it to give an adequate
account of more than the iconic conditions of metaphor.
But let us assume, for the moment, that Peirce was trying to give a global definition of metaphor here, and that he was just a
little sloppy with regard to the metaphor/simile distinction in allowing that any symbolic/indexical assertion of an iconic
proposition is metaphor. If that is the case, Peirce was more than a little sloppy; he failed miserably. What of the assertion "My
brother John is like me"? That is undeniably a symbolic/indexical representation that I am an icon of my brother John, or that
my brother John is an icon of me (though not, I hope, on either reading, in respect of John's also being like a hairy ape).
Although this assertion satisfies the alleged "global definition" of metaphor, would it really satisfy anyone's practical
expectations of metaphor? I should think that even those who advocate the socalled "substitution" theorythat metaphor is merely
elliptical comparison (more at chapter 3)-

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would reject this as an example. Only those badly misinformed souls who deny that there is any literal/figural distinction to be
made at all in language, insisting that the general metaphoricity of all signs precludes any sign from being called metaphor in
particular, would say that this example is as good an example of metaphor as we can hope to find. Peirce was certainly not
among their number. If anything, as we will see, he was sometimes averse to metaphorical language because it offended his love
of precise and literal terminology. So I cannot believe that he would accept "My brother John is like me" as "metaphor" in any
salient respect. And yet that is precisely what we would force him to accept by demanding, of his hypoicon classification, a
global definition of metaphoreither that, or we must begin by admitting his failure to anything insightful.
Although it may be merely my wishful thinking, I do not think that Peirce failed to say anything insightful. What he said is
extremely compact if not cryptic, and what he meant to leave with us may very well have been nothing more than a vague
suggestion which he himself had neither the time nor the desire to develop. But I am absolutely convinced that sense can be
developed from his suggestiongreat sense, perhaps many senses, of which my reading is only one. For the reasons given,
though, I must base my reading on the notion that Peirce was suggesting not the distinction of metaphor from all other signs but
its distinction from other hypoicons, the other two being the "image" and "diagram." My hypothesis is that the Peircean
"metaphor" is accurately described as a metaicon, a sign grounded in a type of iconicity which encompasses images and
diagrams at the same time exceeding them by a critical magnitude.
At least this is the hypothesis I wish to consider further to see where it might lead. As a first step, I will compare it with a rather
different hypothesis formulated by Douglas Anderson (1984a, 1984b), who (so far as I know) has given the most thorough and
formidable explication in Peircean exegesis of this passage.
Noting the difficulty of this passage and the paucity of other passages on metaphor in Peirce's writing, Anderson begins by
saying that Peirce "places metaphors under icons" (1984b: 453), affirming that Peirce is "clear in subsuming metaphors, together
with images and analogies or diagrams, under the class of icons" (455). Although he has little to say about images, one of
Anderson's main objectives is to explicate Peirce's distinction between the metaphor (the third type of hypoicon) and the
diagram (or analogy), which is the second type: The difference, Anderson maintains, is that "in the growth of thought analogies
are effective primarily for science and metaphors primarily (not exclusively) for art" (455). The analogy belongs mainly to
science, Anderson thinks, because it is grounded in "isomorphism" with its object, whereas the metaphor belongs primarily to art
because it is grounded in "isosensism'' (459). Basically, this

Page 23
means that analogy is the discovery of a real, objective, and antecedent link between the analogical icon and its object, whereas
the metaphorical "resemblance" is "not traceable to antecedent links" but 'is created in the articulation of the metaphor" (459).
As Anderson points out, this coincides with the "interaction" theory of metaphor put forward by Max Black (extended treatment
at my chapter 3).
Anderson's argument for this position is based in part upon the observation (also noted by Pignatari 1978: 93) that metaphors are
thirds in this trichotomy of hypoicons. "When Peirce holds metaphors to be thirds," Anderson says, 'he suggests the presence of
a third thing which ties together the quality sets of the relata. But he does not tell us what this third thing is" (455). In order to
get at what this third thing in Peirce's formula may be, Anderson takes up the briefer but very interesting explanation of C. M.
Smith: The third thing in the metaphor is 'one quality mediating between two others" (1972: 26). Anderson says this accounts
for Peirce's claim that the metaphor's parallelism is "in something else," or, in Smith's words, some "other medium." Anderson
concludes: 'That is, the parallelism of a metaphor, in being between 'other' mediums, is between things which are not, or cannot
be, isomorphically related. Therefore, they must create their own similarity or identity" (457).
If metaphoric similarity is a "created" relation, rather than a "discovered" relation (465), how then would Anderson explain the
sense of 'rightness" or "aptness" we often feel in a poetic metaphor? Anderson's answer is that the metaphor is like the
experience of "déjà vu," which Peirce described in talking about self-signifying symbols (MS 517). In other words, Anderson
says, as we read a creative metaphor, ''a feeling arises which feels appropriate but has no object to which it is appropriate. Thus
it is self-representing: it signifies its own created icon and refers, if at all, to its own created referent" (459).
My own hypothesis about metaphorical similarity is exactly the opposite in this respect: I propose that it is least of all, in its
highest or purest form, a "selfcreated" thing comparable to a mental accident or mistake like "déjà vu." Nevertheless, I believe
that Anderson (along with Smith) is very astute in focussing on the question of what that "third" level might be in the Peircean
formula for the metaphorical hypoicon. I simply think that Anderson has looked in the wrong place for the answer to that
question. Specifically, instead of hypothesizing a genuine third ground of Firstness (a third ground of real iconicity or similarity
in this case, I wish to say), Anderson has in fact looked to Thirdness itself for the answerthat is, to the symbolic complexity of
metaphor, its actual (not potential) instigation of new configurations of meaning. Anderson has many illuminating things to say
about that topic (460-467). But that topic takes us beyond the immediate focus of this passage (iconicity) and, in so doing,
further obscures what I believe is its far-reaching though inchoate potential. While

Page 24
I certainly do not wish to deny the creativity inherent in poetic metaphor or the relevance of this passage to that creativity (as I
will demonstrate in chapters 47), I wish to explore, just here, the alternative hypothesis that we need not go beyond the iconic
level in order to understand how Peirce's "metaphor" is grounded in a hypoiconic third.
In fairness to Anderson, I must note that he, too, attempts to keep his reading of metaphoric similarity from going beyond the
iconic level. He argues, "Peirce claims that iconicity is most emphasized in a symbol which signifies 'what it does' and therefore
signifies 'itself alone' (MS 517, p. 67)" (459). Thus, in the one example he is willing to call a "metaphor""the field
smiles''Anderson says we have 'an iconic sign grounded in itself as pure icon" (459). This I find unconvincing, for it seems to
me there is a confusion here as to what might be iconic of what. When asked to interpret, as metaphor, "the field smiles," I think
most people would begin by trying, at least, to think of some possible object in the field (perhaps a profusion of "gay" flowers?)
which might be figuratively signified by the icon of smiling. Whether or not that effort is successful, we do not have, here, an
iconic sign which signifies "itself alone"a true example of which would have to be a smile that signifies nothing but a smile (one
which therefore seems very familiar to us, but which we have in fact never seen before, as in déjà vu). In any event, this
example of metaphor (a rather weak example on which to build one's whole case, I think) does not escape analogical
deconstructability as Anderson intends for it to do, even if the quotient of this personification is nothing more than a 'feeling"
like "well-being":
smiling / [human] :: [_____]field
[icon] [object]
("smiling is to a human AS X is to a field")
While it is of course unnecessary for anyone to formalize or "intellectualize" the metaphor in this way, I believe that any
interpreter who was successful in understanding it at all would have to take the first step of identifying any of a number of
properties (X) in some field, properties with which the "blank" in the above analogy might conceivably be filled. Thus, while the
field itself and its properties (the object) might be entirely imaginary, interpretation would have to proceed on the hope that the
relations which hold between the parts of the icon [smile / human] might prove isomorphic with the relations which hold
between the parts of the object [X / field]. I believe this is precisely what Peirce had in mind in the hypoicon passage when he
described diagrams as iconic signs "which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by
analogous relations in their own parts" (CP 2.277). While the object of a successful diagram need not be an actually existent
thing, then, the isomorphism between icon and object in a successful analogy (a relation between relations,

Page 25
rather than a relation between single things) would be decidedly real. Although Anderson agrees that Peircean diagrams express
real isomorphism, his effort to show that Peircean 'metaphors" do not exhibit real similarities is therefore unsuccessful from this
example. (The example is in fact a diagram embodied in a degenerate metaphor, a notion I will clarify later.)
Anderson's difficulty in accepting metaphorical iconicity as real apparently stems from a requirement of excessive visual or
physical precision which he places on the concept of isomorphism or likeness. For instance, he says that "the field smiles"
cannot exhibit any real isomorphism between the qualities of the field and the qualities of the smile "unless the field has a
curved furrow in it" (458). Must all (real) isomorphism be visual or even sensory? If so, we might be forced to the conclusion
that even many scientific or mathematical analogies are to that extent ''deficient" in realityat least in comparison to images.
Peirce wrote:
Turning now to the rhetorical evidence, it is a familiar fact that there are such representations as icons. Every picture
(however conventional its method) is essentially a representation of that kind. So is every diagram, even although there be
no sensuous resemblance between it and its object, but only an analogy between the relations of the parts of each. (CP
2.279; emphasis added)
Here, I take it, a picture would be mainly an "image" bearing a (predominantly) concrete sensory resemblance to its object. But a
"diagram" proper is more abstract; while the diagrammatic icon itself may consist of physical parts, it is the relation of these
parts that signifies a relation of parts in the object; the object (and its parts) need not be physical at all. The isomorphism of the
diagram is therefore more general, but no less real than that of the image. It is important to note, however, that this passage does
not preclude a diagrammatic sign from exhibiting a sensuous resemblance; as I will show, a sign which is predominantly
diagrammatic may include elements of (vague) physical imagery; in fact, all of Anderson's own examples of the diagram (and I
think Peirce would agree that Anderson is correct in so classifying them) do happen to exhibit a sensory resemblance to their
objects (specifically, of physical shape). What this passage does do, however, is to release diagrammatic similarity from that
requirement. If the isomorphism of the Peircean diagram need not be sensory, is it any less real for all that?
Anderson would answer No, I believe, but here his neglect of the image in his interpretation of Peirce's trichotomy of hypoicons
becomes important. That is, had Anderson paid more attention to how a diagram differs from an image, he might have gotten a
different clue as to how a metaphor, in turn, differs from a diagram. This brings me to the core of my hypothesis: The ultimate
ground of the Peircean "metaphor" (metaicon) differs from that of the "diagram" just as that of the "diagram" differs from that
of the "image"that is, by degree of abstraction along the very

Page 26
same continuum of real iconicity. Diagrammatic similarity proper is no less 'real" than that of the sensory image; it is simply
more abstract, and thus not necessarily sensory at all. Likewise, metaphoric similarity proper is no less "real" than that of the
diagram; its ultimate ground is simply more general yet, by the magnitude of one additional stepa step Anderson is not willing to
take. At the risk of its being a misstep, I will try to take it: Far from crossing the line between reality and unreality, the step "up"
from analogy to the level of Peircean "metaphor" per se is a step from analogical isomorphism into an overarching iconic type. It
is not, of all things, a fanciful indulgence in the selffabricating illusion of déjà vu, but a poetic experiment in archetypal
iconicity (metaphoricity proper), which is not a ''created" phenomenon, even though it may well be a creative factor in the
genetic code of symbolic growth (more at chapter 7).
Anderson ably discusses the importance of metaphor with respect to the growth of symbols in Peirce's system (CP 2.222 and
2.290n), and he attributes this in part to the "vagueness" of metaphorical similarity (461-462). Here, I think, our two hypotheses
are within a hair's-breadth of agreementif only we could agree on the meaning of this term "vagueness." As Jarrett Brock has
shown (1979), Peirce had an elaborately formulated "Logic of Vagueness," and he used the term "vague" in at least two different
senses (45-49). In one sense, Peirce used the term to mean basically "imprecise" or, in Brock's words, "insufficiently specific or
informative" (45). In the other sense, however, the logical or philosophical sense, Peirce meant "definitional indeterminacy,"
which has to do, among other things, "with the now familiar notion of borderline cases," as Brock puts it (46). I believe it must
be this sort of vagueness which characterizes what Peirce elsewhere called the "clustering distributions" of "purposive classes"
as a final cause in evolution (CP 1.204-207). Peirce explained, "It follows that it may be quite impossible to draw a sharp line of
demarcation between two classes, although they are real and natural classes in strictest truth" (CP 1.208). This sort of vagueness,
then, signifies only an appropriate level of generality for broad typological truth and in no way implies a lack of reality.
It should be clear that I believe it is a necessarily vague (in the philosophical sense) but decidedly real resemblance which
characterizes this highest ground of metaphorical similarity. Anderson, on the other hand, despite his statement that "vagueness
is appropriate for creative metaphor" (462), persists in speaking of it as "notoriously vague" and "imprecise" (465). It seems
clear enough that he considers the vagueness of metaphorical similarity as rather inimical to its reality, even though he affirms
the reality of image-based similarity and diagrammatic isomorphism under the very same heading of the Peircean hypoicon. Yet
he correctly admits that analogical similarity itself is "necessarily vague" in a different sense (468, n. 12). In another note,
Anderson even

Page 27
goes so far as to admit that Peirce, in a 1906 paper on graphs, said that all icons are reducible to antecedent forms in their
objects. (See also Ransdell 1979.) "My only defense," Anderson candidly concedes, is that Peirce's concern in that paper was
"with logic and precision and not with poetry; and in the interest of clarity, he avoids mention of the vaguer side of thought"
(468, n. 11).
I certainly do not wish to reduce metaphorical similarity to "logic" in any sense except that sense in which "logic" means
''semeiotic." (See Ketner 1983 and Fisch 1978.) I simply see no reason why metaphorical similarity must be banished from
reality "in the interest of clarity." On the contrary, I will argue that especially the poetic metaicon, not in spite of but because of
its typological "vagueness," is enormously real, that it is just as "clear" as it needs to be (and no more so) in order to
embodyamong radically dissimilar referentscompelling, far-reaching, substantive, and salient similarities. (Chapters 3 and 4 will
develop and illustrate this claim at greater length.)
On the other hand, Anderson is correct, I believe, in suggesting that metaphorical similarity, in its highest form, has a decidedly
less "preset" cast to it than that of an image or diagram (even when the image or diagram is embodied in a metaphorical frame).
As another scholar, Andersen (1980: 202), has commented about Peirce's hypoicons, "in the metaphor, the signans is allowed to
represent its signatum by reason of an ad hoc recognized similarity between the two." I can accept this statement so long as it is
not taken to undermine the ultimate reality of the similarity; that is, so long as the "ad hocness" of the metaphor is understood as
being in the recognition of reality. Poetic metaphor in the epitome requires greater creativity, greater "abductive effort" or
"semantic reach" (as Michael Shapiro has suggested to me), than do images and diagrams, which usually embody "more statable
preconditions." But the greater effort required by the metaicon is rewarded with the discovery of a greater truth. This truth is
"greater" not because its parallelism is (qualitatively) "more parallel" than that of the image and diagram, but becausein reaching
across the vast semantic space of a metaiconic type to find its elementsit encompasses and helps to define a larger reality. The
antecedence of this reality is not a "preset" truth; it is rather a potentiality evolving into truth, which operates through the
fortuitous variety of ways which poets find to embody it and readers find to interpret it. Indeed, because of the vagueness and
primal character of pure metaphoricity, I believe that individual acts of poetic metaphor are precisely what the metaiconic type
requires in order to reach its full entelechy. In this respect, then, I am sympathetic with Anderson's reading.
Further, I think Anderson has quite a valid point, especially as developed in his longer work (1984a), with regard to Peirce's
general attitude about poetry, including poetic metaphor. To say the least, it was an ambivalent attitude. Let us now examine it
closely.

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On the one hand, Peirce often seemed rather condescending toward, if not downright suspicious of, artists in general and poets
in particular. The problem with artists generally, at least in comparison to scientists, is that they were neither practical men nor
great seekers for truth, but rather simple men of 'feeling" (MS 604; CP 1.43). Among these, the 'litterateurs" were perhaps the
most fragile, for it was their 'lively sympathies, easily excited" that made them examples of Peirce's third order of "pessimists"
(unfortunate souls who do little in life but wring their hands at the world); this prohibited them from developing great minds (CB
1166: 111). Perhaps this is what made the 'literary habit" seem ruinous to Peirce (MS 632). Poets in particularunlike scientists,
who were profoundly interested in the great uniformities of naturetended to become engrossed (distracted?) by nature's diversity
(CP 6.100, at the end). 'The thought of the writer is encumbered with sensuous accessories," Peirce wrote (MS 573: 26). The
scientific imagination was 'calm,'' but the 'poetical" imagination was far "too passionate" and had "too little generalizing
faculty"; left to itself, this kind of "genius" would express itself only in "sensuous forms" which were of 'no value at all in
science" (MS 1280: 14). At its most harmless, Peirce wrote, the "poet-imagination riots in ornaments and accessories" (MS
1284: 12-13); at its worst, it might lapse entirely into 'hallucinations" (CP 5.117).
Peirce's attitude about artists and poets in general carries over somewhat into his view of metaphor specifically, if we judge only
by his informal comments in passing. In discussing the profound power of words like justice and truth in the world, for instance,
Peirce felt the need to say that he was not using 'rhetoric or metaphor" (NEM 4: 244). As Donna Orange points out (1984: 52-
53), Peirce would tolerate the use of metaphorical (personifying) language in speaking of God only as long as it was kept more
or less in church where it belongedaway from science and philosophy. About such figurative religious language, Peirce said he
had "no objection . . . except that it is wrapped up in figures of speech, instead of having the explicitness that we desire in
science" (CP 6.199). In that same passage he spoke of such language as "incautiously clothing the idea [of God] in a garb that is
open to criticism," and he compared it to simplistic paintings of God which were "ludicrously figurative." Even when he saw fit
to praise a poet for his metaphors, the praise was more for the "feeling" than for the 'idea"; one of his favorite poets, for
instance, was George Herbert,
every one of whose pieces embodies some original and striking thought of which the intense sincerity is brought home to
us all the more by the extreme oddity of the metaphors, some of which would border on the comical but for their powerful
earnestness. (MS 683: 18)
Oddly enough, Peirce introduced one of his own most revealing "metaphors" with an apology. He offered what I judge to be a
brilliant figure: The Sym-

Page 29
bol is the "complex whole" of the "main body of thought"; the Index consists of the "nails and teeth" and "hard parts of the
body" that "hold us stiffly up to the realities''; and the Icon becomes the "blood" that "supplies the nutriment." Before presenting
this, however, Peirce confessed, tellingly: "A metaphor is not always to be despised" (MS 404: 15, emphasis added).
Now on the other hand, as if we were talking about an entirely different philosopher, Peirce often came rushing to the defense of
artists and poets, and not just on account of their "earnestness" of feeling. After suggesting that the "highest kind of synthesis"
finds, among data, "connections which they would not otherwise have had" (strong counter-evidence to my hypothesis), Peirce
nevertheless went on to point out that poet, scientist, and geometer perform comparable tasks in that very respect:
The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man. The artist introduces a fiction;
but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing them
beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind.
The geometer draws a diagram, which if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation, and by means of observation of that
diagram he is able to synthesize and show relations between elements which before seemed to have no necessary
connection. (CP 1.383)
The above passage seems in accord with the so called "aesthetic turn" in Peirce's thought during the 1890's (see Anderson
1984b: 466; Hocutt 1962; compare Peirce's earlier and later classification of the sciences with respect to Esthetics as shown by
Scott 1985: 45). As early as 1893, Peirce commented, in a footnote, that a "logician," no less, could construct a new language
entirely out of metaphors, given a few literal "prepositions" to work from (CP 2.290 n. 1). Certainly the evidence from around
1900 and after shows a more approving attitude towards poetry and metaphor. In 1903 (the year of our hypoicon passage),
Peirce suggested that metaphor is a principal source and can be a "rather helpful" source for new symbols (or new applications
of old symbols) to accommodate the "new conceptions" of science (CP 2.222). Peirce's own metaphors, about this time, began to
acquire an increasingly important cognitive and epistemic function. Consider for example his elaborate "metaphor" of
consciousness as a lake. He began:
We are going to shock the physiological psychologists, for once, by attempting, not an account of a hypothesis about the
brain, but a description of an image which shall correspond, point by point, to the different features of the phenomenon of
consciousness. Consciousness is like a bottomless lake .... (CP 7.553)
After going through it a second time, he concluded, "The aptness of this metaphor is very great" (CP 7.554). In the unpublished
portion of the

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manuscript from which the above is selected, Peirce went on to argue for the "aptness" of the figure at greater length, and it
seems clear that he had in mind much more than "rhetorical" or ''ornamental" aptness (MS 1113). The metaphor had become a
revelatory mechanism for him, a better way of understanding consciousness than any physiological "hypothesis about the brain."
Perhaps his changing view of metaphor was occasioned by his evolving view of the cosmos: "The Universe as an argument is
necessarily a great work of art, a great poemfor every fine argument is a poem and a symphonyjust as every true poem is a
sound argument" (CP 5.119). It is no wonder, then, that in his own "Neglected Argument . .. (1908), Peirce put the poet right
alongside the pure mathematician and other such thinkers (CB 1166: 91). Similarly, the older Peirce might very well have been
carrying on a debate with the younger Peirce when he wrote:
I hear you say: "All that is not fact; it is poetry." Nonsensel Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true
poetry. And let me tell the scientific men that the artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except
for the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for.
I hear you say: "This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception." I reply that every scientific explanation of a
natural phenomenon is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous; and that it
really is so all the successes of science in its applications to human convenience are witnesses. They proclaim that truth
over the length and breadth of the modern world. In the light of the successes of science to my mind there is a degree of
baseness in denying our birthright as children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from anthropomorphic
conceptions of the universe. (CP 1.315316)
Perhaps there is after all, then, a Peircean "continuity between creativity in science and creativity in art," as Anderson himself
says (1984a: 83; compare Scott 1985). If so, there must have beenat least for the older Peircea parallel convergence between the
modes of "discovery" made possible by analogical models and by metaphorical, even poetic, conceptions of the universe.
I believe, however, that Peirce's ambivalence toward poetry and metaphor offers a more important insight than a merely
historical one. A closer look at Peirce's negative comments about metaphor will show not only that they tend to cluster in his
earlier writings but also that there is a rather persistent, specific complaint which these comments tend to share: Peirce detested
"ornamental" figures of speech and circumlocutions. This recurring strain in his criticisms of figurative language might have a
specific, identifiable source in his intellectual history that would make perfect sense of the big change in his attitude about
metaphor. As Fisch (1978: 57) has shown, the younger Peirce was very much under the influence of Whatley's nominalism as
articulated in that author's Elements of Logic. "But the Logic was not the only book of Whatley's on which

Page 31
Peirce had to recite," Fisch writes. "In both terms of his junior year and perhaps also in his senior year he recited on Whatley's
Elements of Rhetoric" (61). Fisch then quotes a passage from the Rhetoric which he describes as "advocating nominalism more
vigorously even than the one that Ogden and Richards quoted from the Logic." Here are, in part, Whatley's words from that
passage: "The full importance, consequently, of Language, and of precise technical Language, . . . can never be duly appreciated
by those who still cling to the theory of 'Ideas'; those imaginary objects of thought in the mind . . ." (1846: 20-21). What this
same Whatley said about figurative language therefore comes as no surprise: Metaphor, he argued in the Rhetoric, is a needless
deviation from "plain and strictly appropriate style'' (1846: 34).
Was the younger Peirce's view of metaphor heavily influenced by this attitude of Whatley's? If so, perhaps Peirce's movement
toward greater and greater acceptance of the epistemic and ontological value of metaphor is parallel to his progress from
nominalism toward realism, as traced elsewhere by Fisch (1967). There is an intriguing portent of this pattern of movement in a
passage from the Lowell Lectures of 1866, in which Peirce's early disdain for metaphor as a figure of speech is clearly present,
but in which his future attitude of reconciliation of metaphor (viewed as icon) with reality may be prefigured. Peirce wrote:
Cuvier said that Metaphysics is nothing but Metaphoran identity which is prettily typified in those acted charades, in the
first of which two doctors come in at opposite sides of the stage, shake hands, and go out for the first scene, then repeat
the same thing for the second scene and again for the whole word; and then do the same thing three times for the three
scenes of the second word. The two words are of course metaphysician and metaphor; and their identity suggests that the
charades must have been the invention of some one who thought with Cuvier that Metaphysics is another term for
Metaphor. If metaphor be taken literally to mean an expression of similitude when the sign of predication is employed
instead of the sign of likenessas when we say this man is a fox instead of this man is like a foxI deny entirely that
metaphysicians are given to metaphor; on the contrary, no other writers can compare with them for precision of language.
But if Cuvier was only using a metaphor himself, and meant by metaphor broad comparison on the ground of characters
of a formal and highly abstract kind,then, indeed, metaphysics professes to be metaphor. That is just its meritas it was
Cuvier's own merit in Zoology. (W 1: 497; CP 7.590, emphasis added)
What Peirce meant here by "metaphor" as the "merit" of metaphysics, namely, that kind of metaphor which involves a "broad
comparison on the ground of characters of a formal and highly abstract kind," might well be illustrated by his discussion of the
syllogism which he presented immediately following (W 1: 497-498; this section omitted from CP 7.590). In his example, the
major premise ("X is thus") combines with the minor premise ("This is X") to produce the (tacit) conclusion [This is thus]. What
strikes me about this example is that

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Peirce discussed it not in the traditional vocabulary of deduction but in terms of sexual procreation: The unspoken conclusion is
suggested as the embryonic "offspring"; the major premise, in supplying "the sphere" for that "new symbol," is treated as the
female; the minor premise, by injecting "the content,'' becomes the male. This is no mere ornamental analogy; it may very well
be, in Peirce's words, a "great analogy" to human reproduction (W: 497). Given the context of this fascinating lecture, Peirce
was by no means using the terminology of human procreation to "dress up" a lesson about the syllogism. On the contrary, he
was using the laws of the syllogism as an icon of a much more universal type of growth which finds yet another token of itself
in human procreation. The figure is rooted in the central metaphor which not only dominates this whole essay but appears quite
often in Peirce's thought: Man as Symbol. (See NEM 4: 262-263 and CB 27: 156-157, for instance. Singer 1984: 54-56 has an
illuminating discussion.)
If Peirce's 1866 description of "metaphysical metaphor" here only vaguely portends the hypoiconic metaphor of 1903 (MS 478;
CP 2.277), at least his own actual use of the man-symbol metaphor throughout this piece is a superb example of what I think is
the somewhat more clearly emerging conception of metaphorical iconicity in his later description of the hypoicons. That is, it is
not that a symbol looks like man (though it might, as an image would); nor is it even that the symbol is merely analogous to
man, though that is undeniably a part of it (specifically, the diagrammatic part); rather, at this "great" level of the analogy, man
really becomes a symbol (just as his symbols really come to life), not because the one is manufactured or copied from the other,
but because each is spontaneously generated in accordance with the law of a third thing. To apply the language of Peirce's
hypoicon passage directly to this figure: A symbol, in its role as metaphorical icon of man, "represents the representative
character" of man (that is, signifies man's own character as sign) by virtue of a parallelism between man and symbol in
"something else." And that "something else," I believe, that third thing, is Reasonablenesshere considered as a controlling iconic
type, the archetype or universal pattern from which both man and his living symbols are cut (more of this later).
That is what I mean by a metaicon, even if it is not exactly what Peirce meant by "metaphor" in the hypoicon passage. In chapter
4, I will offer an argument showing how this conception might work in poetry. For the present, I am content to offer it as a
hypothesis as to what Peirce could have meant, even if that meaning had not yet reached the level of clarity in the early 1900s
that I and others are trying to give it in the 1980s.
Now let us examine this hypothesis in more detail. So far, I have suggested only the gist of it: Metaphorical iconicity is vaguer
or more general though no less real than diagrammatic isomorphism; diagrammatic similarity, in turn, is

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more abstract but no less real than imaginal resemblance. (I use the adjective form "imaginal" instead of "imagistic" to avoid
confusion with the meaning which the "Imagist" school of poets and critics have given to the latter; by ''imaginal" I do not mean
"imaginary.") These distinctions are summarized in figure 2.1, where they are also aligned with the elements from Peirce's
hypoicon passage as I read it.
Hypoicon Mode of Firstness Kind of Iconicity
image first Firstness simple quality
diagram [second] Firstness dyadic isomorphism
metaicon [third] Firstness typological metaphoricity
Figure 2.1
The increasing abstractness as we move from the image through the diagram to the metaicon has also been described above as a
progress from concrete sensory resemblance through formal analogical similarity to general archetypal iconicity. The
identification of imaginal similarity as sensory resemblance poses little difficulty, I take it; Peirce said the image is like its object
in "simple quality," and his most frequent examples of "quality" are the sense qualities like redness. Certainly, more is involved
in Peirce's notion of Quality than the sense qualities, but the key word here is the "simple" quality of the image. I take it to
mean "sensory" because, as we have already seen, Peirce contrasted a picture-image with the diagram on the grounds that a
diagram need not possess any such "sensuous" resemblance (CP2.279). In that same passage and in many others, he identified
the diagram with analogy, and in the hypoicon passage spoke of the diagram as embodying "analogous relations," so I presume
no one would have any difficulty with my reading of the second hypoicon.
How, though, can any sort of iconicity be typological, as I am hypothesizing the third kind of hypoicon to be? Ransdell points
out that there are "laws and types which function iconically" (1979: 56), but he may not have had in mind the same thing I do. I
am talking about a type at the level of Firstness. Am I not committing the same mistake I accused Anderson of makingthat is,
the mistake of going beyond Firstness to Thirdness for an explanation of third Firstness? To put it in my own terms, is not
metaiconicity, precisely, "beyond iconicity"? This is certainly a difficulty I must deal with. Apparently, it is similar to a problem
Peirce himself had to deal with, in his progress from nominalism to realism, when he found that he must "distinguish the
generality of firsts from that of thirds," as Fisch puts it (1967: 173). I believe J. Jay Zeman has expressed the possible solution
very well:
The theory of abstraction is a theory of thirdness, but . . . the thirdness of abstraction is afirst with respect to certain other
viewpoints on thirdness. The

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"being" of abstractions consists, Peirce tells us, in "what they would or might (not actually will) come to in the concrete"
(CP 6.485). (Zeman 1982: 221)
In other words, when I speak of the metaicon as being a type, an abstract third among Firsts, I am speaking of a possible law, a
governing archetypal pattern in embryo as it were, a real and present possibility even before it is actualized in nature, let alone
actualized in the metaphorical assertion. In this respect, I am suggesting that the metaicon might be a sort of final cause in the
evolution of metaphorical thought in poetry and in language. In chapters 4 and 7, I will develop this notion more fully, but here
it is useful to borrow Michael Shapiro's lucid explanation (in a different application) of final causes:
Since it is often erroneously thought that final causation is "backward causation" (i.e., that the future exerts a causal
influence on the present), it is appropriate to emphasize that Peirce follows Aristotle in construing a final cause as a
present possibility, not a future actuality. From a mechanistic point of view it might seem equally paradoxical to attribute
causal potency to present possibilities as to future actualities, since this would endow mere possibilities with the power of
influencing what actually occurs. But Peirce's argument is based on the assertion that some possibilities are more likely to
be actualized just because they are the sort of possibilities that they are: "every general idea has more or less power of
working itself into fact; some more so, some less so' (CP 2.149). (Shapiro 1985b: 11-12)
As I will argue in chapters 3 and 4, the metaicon, viewed as iconic possibility, is not only more likely to be actualized in poetry
than certain other possibilities are, but it possesses an almost irresistible potential for poets. My effort here, though, is simply to
clarify what I mean by this hypothesis that the metaicon, Peirce's hypoiconic "metaphor," is a typological or archetypal icon
whose reality poets are very likely to discover. I mean it not in the sense of some mystical efficient cause which "forces" them
to discover it, but in the sense of a final cause, "whereby the whole calls out its parts" (CP 1.220).
In what sense might this metaicon be a "whole" that "calls out its parts"? Herein lies a further possibility for understanding the
distinctions and relations between the Peircean "metaphor," diagram, and image. My reading of the hypoicons suggests a
hierarchical relationship among the three: The "metaphor,'' grounded in a universal archetype, would logically include (though it
would not merely consist of) innumerable possible diagrams, which would in turn suggest many possible images. Or perhaps the
relations among the three hypoicons may be more aptly conceived as a continuum of iconicity, suggesting that in every iconic
experience there is at least some degree of metaphoricity, diagrammaticality, and imagery; the three grounds of iconicity would
then be distinguished, in actual occurrence, according to which ground was judged as predominant. In fact, I believe, this is
precisely the case: Even an image that happens to be identical to its object in almost every respect-

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say, a full-size wax statue which is so lifelike as to be easily mistaken for the person it depictsis necessarily an 'analogue" in a
weak sense, because the likeness is predicated across disparate media. In an even weaker sense, but for the same reason, that
statue would also be "metaphorical." (Indeed, this is the "weak" sense in which all languages, all signs, are "metaphorical.")
Conversely, if I am right that the essence of metaphor is typological iconicity in its purest form, then we might expect to find, in
actual examples of poetry, signs which we recognize as highly metaphorical but which nonetheless contain many analogical and
imaginal icons. I will argue in chapter 4 that this is precisely what we do find in poetry. Even the most universal and well-
known poetic archetypes are variously expressible (though never exhaustible) in a multitude of poetic diagrams and images.
Beyond that, we even find (more frequently) "degenerate" poetic metaphors whose similarity conditions seem predominantly
analogical or imaginal. Their ''degeneracy" (not a pejorative term) may obtain, in my view, from the simple fact that their
overarching metaicons have not yet been fully conceptualized in poetry or in human language of any kind. In other words, the
"whole" has not yet called out enough of its "parts" to be "discovered" as a type, its ultimate telos, viewed as a present but (thus
far) ineffable possibility.
Perhaps this notion of "hierarchy" or "continuum" among the hypoicons can be clarified by analogy to Peirce's most famous
trichotomy of signs: the Symbol, the Index, and the Icon. As we have seen in chapter 1, any icon in general represents its object
by some sort of similarity to it; any index represents its object by contiguity (spatial or causal) with it; and any symbol
represents its object by a conventional rule (often arbitrary) linking the symbol to its object. But, as we have already seen, every
actual sign involves a combination of these three modes of signifying; signs may be distinguished according to which mode is
predominant in a given case. Thus, we find word symbols (like buzz) which are predominantly iconic; these we may call 'iconic
symbols." Similarly, we find word symbols (like demonstrative that) which have a strong indexical or "fingerpointing"
functionthey hardly indicate any object at all unless they are in some kind of spatial or temporal relation with it; these we may
call 'indexical symbols." Finally, we have word symbols (like boy) which are nearly pure 'symbolic symbols," if you will,
because they have weak indexical functions and only covert iconic content; they represent their objects by convention, mainly,
and so are symbols proper (see NEM 4: 243-255).
Why has something of the same sort not been said about Peirce's hypoicons? If there is an isomorphism between the two
trichotomies of signs (as would be natural to expect, given Peirce's habit of delineating parallel trichotomies), we should find
"degenerate" metaphors in which images dominate (imaginal metaphors), "degenerate" metaphors in which diagrams dominate
(analogical

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metaphors), and metaphors 'proper" in whichhow shall I say it?in which the very principle of metaphoricity itself dominates.
Given the possibility of it, what might such a "principle of metaphoricity" be? If we wish to limit our answer to the realm of
Firstness, we cannot look for the answer among the symbols and indices (except to take this hint from their hierarchical
relationship). Thus all we can do, I believe, is to look in the direction indicated by the rather clear progression of image >
diagram >_____ . What could fill this gap better than the sort of archetypal icon which might also be described as a "master
metaphor" (to borrow a term suggested to me by Jules Levin)? This reading would not make metaphorical iconicity into
Thirdness per se; it would simply explain how metaphoricity might be related to the Icon (a third to a First) by the same logic in
which symbolicity is related to the Sign (a third to a Third). Further, it might explain why metaphorical similarity, in its distilled
essence, seems so naturally adapted to poetry, which I would describe as the distilled essence of language itself. In other words,
the vast archetypal scope of the metaicon, its third Firstness, would naturally adapt it to serve as the rational iconic ground for
the creative Thirdness of intensely poetic metaphors which characteristically link radically diverse referents. This would be the
sense, referred to earlier, in which genuine metaphorical iconicity is perfectly fitted to and thus prefigurative of its other
dimensions (indexical and symbolic).
In any case, I believe that there are metaphors in poetry which do indeed have a real iconic ground far deeper, more nearly
universal, and more clearly suggestive of a teleology in the poet's "making' of language, than are the many other metaphors
which can be almost exhaustively described, in their present forms, as 'analogical" or "imaginal." Analogical and imaginal
metaphors are far more frequent in ordinary speech. They are also more frequent in poetry than are genuine metaicons, but the
similarities revealed by imaginal and analogical metaphors in poetry more often seem headed towards "something else," to use
Peirce's words.
Before looking at a few examples, let us take one last look at Peirce's words in the hypoicon passage:
Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of which they partake. Those which partake of
simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the
parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative
character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. (CP 2.277)
Indulge in an informal dialogue with me about these words. First, images clearly iconize their objects. How? By "partaking,"
themselves, of some of the same simple qualities in which their objects partake. Photograph a red rose with a reasonably good
camera, and the redness in the picture will depict the

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redness of the rose. Diagrams also iconize their objects. How? By modeling, "in their own parts," the same general relation-of-
parts in their objects. Draw up a calendar showing the days of the week as a series of blocks succeeding one another from left to
right. Days are not rectangular, and time does not look, sound, feel, taste, or smell like anything which we can put down on
paper. But the spatial sequence of the blocks on the calendar can serve as a diagram of the temporal sequence of days in actual
time.
Again, what do images and diagrams iconize? Peirce said "thing," presumably meaning objects, physical or mental. What is it
about their objects that images and diagrams iconize? Simple qualities or abstract relations, respectively. And how do they get
the means to accomplish this iconizing? By partaking, themselves, in those same qualities or by exhibiting, in their own parts,
those same relations.
Now, with the same set of questions in mind, look again at this fascinating though cryptic description Peirce offered for
"metaphor": Metaphors (are "those" hypoicons which) "represent the representative character of a representamen by representing
a parallelism in something else."
What does this "metaphor" iconize? Well, an object, of course, but Peirce did not call it an "object" or even a "thing," as he did
in the case of the diagram. He called it a representamen. What is a representamen? It is another word for "sign,'' or at least for
"potential sign" (CP 2.275). What on earth could he mean by saying that the metaphorical sign has yet another "sign" as its
object? Well, every "object" in the Peircean semeiotic is capable of being a sign in some connection (CP5.448n), but that would
apply equally well to the objects of diagrams and images. Why did Peirce take the trouble, in just this connection, of singling
out the metaphorical object as a sign in itself? (Hold that thought.)
Next, what is it about this "object/sign" that the metaphorical sign iconizes? Well, some quality or likeness, presumably, since
the metaphor is iconic of its object, but Peirce did not call it a quality or likeness. He called it the representative character of
the object/sign. So the metaphorical hypoicon is a sign which iconizes its object's own character as sign. Character as what kind
of sign? Sign of what? (Hold those thoughts, too.)
Finally, how does the metaphorical hypoicon get the means to accomplish such a feat of iconizing? Does it get it simply by
partaking directly in the quality of its object, as the image does? Does it get it by merely exhibiting, in its own configuration, the
abstract structure of its object? No, not directly at least, for Peirce said it gets its iconic power by representing a parallelism in
something else. So the metaphorical hypoicon is a sign which iconizes its object's own character as sign by means of a
parallelism in some third thing. What is this third thing, and what does it have to do with the iconic relationship between the
first two things (the metaphorical sign and its object/sign)?

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It is now time to let go of all the thoughts we have been holding. You already know most of my thoughts, but I will present them
again by way of summary and, for the sake of leading to some new thoughts, in reverse order:
1. What is the third thing in the "metaphor," and what does it have to do with the iconic relationship between the first two things
(the metaphorical icon and its object/sign)? Answer: The third thing is a controlling (meta)iconic type. It "controls' in the sense
of a final cause, a whole that calls out its parts. It provides for the iconic relationship between the metaphorical icon and its
object/sign because they are, jointly, parts which may be "called out" by this type.
2. What kind of sign is this "object/sign"? What is it a sign of? Answer: The object/sign is also an icon. It is a token icon of its
controlling iconic type and is thus a (potential) sign of that type. Hence, it is also potentially a reciprocal sign of the
metaphorical icon itself, as a by-product of their joint inheritance vested in the controlling type.
3. Why did Peirce take the trouble, just in connection with the hypoiconic metaphor (not in connection with the image or
diagram), of singling out the metaphorical object as a possible sign in itself? Answer: I cannot know his intention, but I am
guessing that it may have been his vague purpose to distinguish the hypoiconic metaphor (from the image and diagram) by
granting its object this character as a reciprocal icon.
Before explaining the "reciprocal" power of the metaicon, I offer a schematic summary, at figure 2.2, showing my interpretation
of all three hypoicons. In the figure, the sign () represents simple or sensory resemblance; the sign (::) represents analogical
proportionality; and the sign (¬) represents something like "reciprocal, teleological congruency."
What is the meaning of this "reciprocal teleological congruency" represented as (¬) in figure 2.2? I will argue (again at chapter
4) that the metaicon, actualized in its purest form as a poetic archetype, is characteristically (and powerfully) a reversible
metaphor, unlike most metaphorical analogies and images. For the moment, I will explore this aspect of my hypothesis only so
far as it may help to clarify my interpretation of the Peircean "metaphor" as metaicon.
Peirce's own metaphor of Man as Symbol, as I have already said, is an excellent example of what I mean by the metaicon.
(Remember that I am here discussing only the iconic character of global metaphor when I call "Man-Symbol" a "metaphor.")
Now note that this figure is reversible. (See CP 7.587, where Peirce said that "men and words reciprocally educate each other.")
On the one hand, many aspects of human lifeespecially its growth, creativity, and governance by reasonpresent revealing figures
of the way all symbols in the universe, human or otherwise, live and function and grow; it is thus no acci-

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Figure 2.2
dent that Peirce, in his efforts to explore the universe semeiotically, frequently employed a host of organic metaphors. On the
other hand, the more we study the logic and life and growth of symbols, man-made or natural, the more we come to understand
new things about ourselves as human beings. Symbolicity is iconic of humanity, and humanity in turn is iconic of symbolicity.
Wherein does this symmetrical figurality lie? If my reading of Peirce is correct, it does not lie in the mere fact that human beings
make symbols, and so imbue them with their own idiosyncrasies, for that explanation leaves out the enormous iconic potential of
natural symbols, indispensable to poet and anthropologist alike in their efforts to make sense of human life. Nor is it the case
that even natural symbols just happen to exhibit, in their own structures, patterns which furnish serendipitous analogues for
poets and anthropologists to use in telling what they already know of man. Someone who uses the ManSymbol connection as
mere rhetorical analogy is displaying a grasp of part, but not all, of its power, for the rhetoric of the analogy is but a
"degenerate" form of the metaphor. Its real power is not rhetorical but revelatory, even prophetic. It is forever suggesting new
hypothesesalternately about the nature of symbols and about the nature of manwhich frequently prove to be tellingly true. These
hypotheses are confirmed by subsequent experience much more often than could reasonably be expected if there were not
"something else" to the metaphor. And what, again, is that "something else"? In Peirce's theory, it is the very

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Reasonableness of the universe itselfcall it God, if you will, for that is undeniably an analogue related to the same metaphor.
(See Donna Orange 1984 for a splendid exegesis of Peirce's concept of God as Reasonableness.) But whatever analogical form
this metaphor takes, it is grounded in a great archetype of which all symbolic replicas, including human creativity and rationality,
are but tokens.
In Peirce's "master metaphor," then, humanity iconizes symbolicity, and symbolicity in turn iconizes humanity, not because the
one has sprung from the other, nor because the one has been copied from or onto the other, but because each has been "called
out of" or "copied from" a third thing. Consequently, as icons of this third thing (Universal Reasonableness), Man and Symbol
are of course naturally and necessarily iconic of one another in their own qualities and structure, but not just in their own
qualities or structure. Because their reciprocal iconicity obtains as a by-product of their joint but independent heritage in a
master typology, their similarity cannot be fully understoodnot as the highly suggestive and far-reaching phenomenon it really
isby merely considering the one token as an icon, pro term, of the other. For we cannot begin to apprehend the prophetic power
of their similarity until we see the symmetry of it; and the symmetry of it turns on the pivotal final cause of their emerging
metaiconic type.
On the other hand, analogical and imaginal metaphors possess this symmetry and reversibility, I believe, only when they are
fully lexicalized, which is to say "literalized," or when they are living extensions of some clearly formed metaicon. This might
at first seem to be a tautology, but let us examine some examples to see, first, whether imaginal and analogical metaphors can in
fact be distinguished from one another at all, and then, second, whether or not they can be distinguished from metaicons by their
lack of icon-to-object symmetry and reversibility.
Since poetic metaphors are the focus of subsequent chapters, I will indulge in a few examples from "ordinary" speech here, for
the sake of simplicity. Consider just these four:
1. The boxer has an iron fist.
2. The president has an iron will.
3. That baby has creamy skin.
4. That executive is the cream of the company.
All of these are degenerate metaphors, I believe, because they are dominated rather exclusively either by imaginal or by
analogical similarity. Two of them are imaginal metaphors, I think, and two are analogical. I invite you to test intuitions with me
in my efforts to say which are which.

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The boxer's iron fist in sentence 1 is an imaginal metaphor because it is based on a simple sensory connection between two
thingsthe connection being hardness or the like. We imagine the "feel" of the boxer's fist striking the jaw directly with the
momentum and hardness of iron. But what of the president's iron will in sentence 2? Surely, hardness or the like (as
inflexibility) is involved with the iron, but do we imagine "feeling" the president's will as we do the boxer's fist? If we try to
imagine it, we quickly see that someone's will is not the sort of thing that can be directly seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt. It
is an abstract object. Thus, although the icon of iron is decidedly concrete, we cannot liken it to anything in the president's
willexcept by analogy. The president's will is to the wills of others (or perhaps to his/her other attributes), as iron is to other
materials. One reading would therefore be:
president's will / others' wills :: iron / other metals
Here is no simple likeness between single elements; it is rather the relation of the president's will to other elements in its
abstract domain which is compared to the relation of iron to other elements in its concrete domain. There simply is nothing in
our notion of a person's will to accommodate a simple sensory connection or transfer to or from the hardness of iron, so we must
(at least unconsciously) construct an analogy in order to understand the metaphor. Therefore, while the boxer's iron fist is an
imaginal metaphor, the president's iron will is an analogical metaphor.
The same contrast may easily be drawn between the baby's creamy skin in sentence 3 and the executive's "creaminess" in
sentence 4. I speak of the executive's "creaminess" facetiously, of course, to point out how silly it would be to interpret these
two metaphors at the same level of iconicity. In the case of the baby, there is an imagined but direct tactile (softness,
smoothness) or visual (if it happens to be a white baby, more or less) or perhaps even olfactory or gustatory comparison (if the
interpreter enjoys the nuzzling or kissing of babies or the smell or taste of cream). Whatever one's preferences, the metaphor's
menu of possible similarities between the baby's skin and the cream are all predominantly sensory. Perhaps someone will note
that the tactile and visual connections, in this case, seem more direct than any possible smell/taste connection, the latter being so
remote as to boarder on the analogical, if not to cross over into it entirely. But that would only underline my point: There is a
continuum of iconicity from the sensory up through the analogical to the metaphorical proper. As Peirce put it, "All icons, from
mirror-images to algebraic formulae, are much alike, committing themselves to nothing at all, yet the source of all our
information" (MS 599: 42). The question is what ground of iconicity predominates in a given figure. In my judgment, sensory
similitude

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dominates the comparison of the baby's skin to cream. I am fully prepared to admit that even sensory perception, in a subdued
sense, is itself broadly analogical, especially in cases of synaesthesia.
The idea of a continuum in iconicity, however, does not preclude our making quite valid judgments as to discrete levels within
that continuum. The executive's "creaminess" reminds us of that. Presumably, no direct sensuous connection between the
executive and the cream in sentence 4 is intended. Although the executive is (probably) a physical object (a person), it is rather
this person's relationship with other persons (in the sphere of the company) which is compared with the cream's relationship to
other things in its sphere (perhaps to milk in a bottle). We can try, absurdly, to 'visualize" it if we want to, but because the
notions of "rank" or "privilege" or ''excellence" in a company are so abstract, we find that the metaphor makes better "sense" at
the level of analogy:
executive / others in the company :: cream / milk in a bottle
While truly poetic metaphors offer better evidence, as we will see in subsequent chapters, these conversational metaphors offer
at least a preliminary indication that tropes which are predominantly imaginal may be clearly distinguished from those which are
predominantly diagrammatic. That this view gets "fuzzy" at the edges merely reminds us that in human semeiosis (ana)logical
possibility exceeds sensory possibility only in degree.
This hierarchical continuity between imaginal and diagrammatic similarity is even more apparent when we notice that it seems
rather easy and entirely logical to expand an image into a diagram, even though (as we have just seen) it is difficult if not absurd
to reduce any diagram to an image. For instance, if we wish, there is no trouble at all in reformulating the two imaginal
metaphors above as analogies:
boxer's fist / others' fists :: iron / other materials
baby's skin / others' skin :: cream / raw milk
This fact does not destroy the distinction between images and diagrams; it merely indicates that the distinction is not a
disjunction. The facts are just as the hypothesis would lead us to expect: What makes immediate sense in the metaphorical
image is fully consonant with the more elaborate (ana)logical pattern of the metaphorical diagram; most any metaphorical image
is thus expandable to the format of an analogyredundantly so. Conversely, as we have already seen, it is difficult if not absurd to
reduce a pure abstract analogy to an image. The mistake of demanding sensory clarity of all metaphors, by the way, is what
blocks many people from understanding and appreciating some of the greatest poetry written.
A parallel but more forgivable mistake is made by those who think they have

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exhausted the potential of a genuine metaicon after they have solved the "riddle" of some analogical proportion it contains. As I
will argue in chapter 4, for instance, one cannot get the full power of the "death-night" metaicon in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73
simply by reasoning in linear fashion from the iconic analogue night/day to the conclusion that the object happens to be
death/life; for in the sonnet, death/life is also an important icon, in its turn, of the object night/day. Night thus becomes much
more than a mere euphemistic analogue or substitute for death; because the poem brings out the fact that death and night are
jointly signs of one another, our attention ought to focus on what makes this sothe law or type of cyclical change which serves
as the controlling icon for the whole poem. As extensions from this archetypal metaicon, even the multitude of images and
diagrams in the poem acquire a beautiful and prophetic symmetry, just as we have already seen in Peirce's Man-Symbol
metaicon.
Do all metaphors have this symmetry? For the moment, I will limit the question to whether or not all metaphors display this
symmetry. After all, even if I can demonstrate that some metaphors do not seem to be symmetrical, it is possiblegiven my
hypothesisthat they lack symmetry precisely because some metaicon to which they belong has not yet fully emerged to our
human understanding.
Within my present limits, however, many (in fact, most) metaphors seem asymmetrical to some degree, and thus are not
productively reversible. But I must caution: When I say they are not productively reversible, I mean that they are not reversible
to any novel epistemic advantage with respect to the same similarity. Because any object is capable of serving as a sign of any
other object in some respect, it necessarily follows that any metaphorical object is capable of signifying its own metaphorical
sign in some respect; the question is whether it may do so productively in the same respects. Metaiconic signs, as we have seen,
iconize their objects in regard to the same typological attributes on which those objects, in turn, iconize them. The same cannot
be said for most degenerate analogical and imaginal metaphors. Consider again the four examples we have just been discussing.
We have seen that the relation iron/other materials can serve as an effective icon for the object-relation will/other wills. Is this
analogy reversible? With respect to just the same attribute of hardness or inflexibility, apparently not, or at least not with any
new insight about the object (which would be iron/other materials in the reversed analogy). The original metaphor gives a new
understanding about the abstract character of someone's will ("stubbornness") by re-configuring it as a concrete relation
("hardness"). That is the way many conversational metaphors work, and work very well. But that is also the cause of their
asymmetry (concrete-to-abstract). Concrete objects serve productively in metaphor

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to configure abstract objects with respect to certain attributes, but abstract objects do not work so well in metaphor (with respect
to those same attributes) to configure concrete objectssimply because, most often, we can already see how concrete objects are
configured with respect to those attributes. Thus it is difficult to imagine how reference to someone's stubbornness can help us to
understand, any better than we already understand it, the inflexibility of iron. As Derek Bickerton has pointed out, iron is
already "marked" for hardness in metaphor (1969). Of course you can easily imagine a context (say, someone is trying to cut
through a piece of iron with a fingernail file) in which the remark, "Oh, this stubborn iron!" would make sense. But what sense
does it make? I think the sense is mainly emphatic (via redundancy) of a lexical connotation already rather permanently attached
to iron. If there is more to it than that, it must be some other similarity than simple hardness. This seems clear from considering
what the exact reversal of iron will would bewillful iron. Here the similarity condition has apparently changed from mere
"hardness" to something more like "unpredictability": The iron acts capriciously, as if it had a mind of its own, and will not
behave as you want or expect it to. Thus, while the metaphor of iron will is ''reversible" in a sense, it is not reversible in just the
same sensenot to any new epistemic advantage. Contrast this observation with what we have already observed of the metaicon,
in which the sign function is reversible in the original set of typological senses with greater insight as to what they mean and
how they apply.
The lack of advantage, or the change of sense, is even more apparent in efforts to reverse imaginal metaphors. "This iron is
harder than a boxer's fist!" does not do much (for me). We can do better of coursehow about "bareknuckled iron"?but here a
new metaphor brings in something besides an attribution of hardness; is it rawness? Perhaps the rough, angular edges of iron
rivets? Consider, too, as a reversal of "creamy skin," the idiom of "skinny cream." Here the similarity is apparently thinness or
lack of body, not softness or whiteness, as in the original; furthermore, this new sense is analogical, not clearly imaginal. I
suppose I would have to admit "baby-skin cream" as an image of smooth cream, but it seems rather affected to me, purely
ornamental, except for its introduction of a new (analogical) sense"delicacy."
It is interesting to note that the apparent asymmetry of these imaginal metaphors is not a concrete-to-abstract asymmetry. Iron
may be harder in actuality than any boxer's fist (if the boxer plays fair), but it is certainly no more concrete. Cream is no more
concrete than a baby's skin, either. Then what makes these imaginal metaphors seem asymmetrical?
A proposal I will make in chapter 6 might account for it. There I posit a semantic hierarchy, loosely based on Peirce's theory of
Being, in which decreasing levels of abstractness are replaced, at the lower end of the hierarchy, by in-

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creasing degrees of perceived "closeness" or "relevance" to human life. This, I argue, explains why we often tend to think of
abstract ideas as spatially "remote'' from "down-to-earth" human experience. But it also suggests that our habits of hierarchical
classification (in the lexicon, for instance) are somewhat governed by the perceived relevance of phenomena to ourselves. For
instance, a series of psycholinguistic experiments I conducted with Ronald Lunsford (see Haley 1975) suggest that most
speakers (of English, at least) tend to classify objects like rocks "higher" or "further out" in semantic space (from the human
category) than objects like flowers, even though rocks are certainly no more abstract than flowers. Flowers are simply perceived
as being more like human beings. Interestingly enough, Peirce himself made an early and aborted attempt to classify "as many
words as possible" from the standpoint of their relevance to human life (MSS 1136, 1137). His sketchy results (in MS 1137) are
rather strikingly supported by the experimental data that Lunsford and I obtained.
Without pressing the notion too far, I would suggest that these facts might help explain why metaphors like "creamy skin" or
"iron fist" seem irreversible without a change of sense: The asymmetry is not concrete-to-abstract, in these cases, but human-to-
nonhuman. In other words, once a nonhuman object is "marked" for its relevance to human life in some respect, we tend to use
that object (in metaphors) as a means to signify the same quality in ourselves; it then seems backwards or redundant to use
ourselves as a means to talk about the object in respect to that quality. (After all, we are the important "tenor," while it is but the
"vehicle.') And, conversely, once we have "condescended" to personify some nonhuman object, graciously "lending" it some
attribute of our own, it then seems ridiculous to turn around and ask to borrow it back.
In any case, asymmetrical markedness of one sort or another appears to be at work in degenerate analogical and imaginal
metaphors. Michael and Marianne Shapiro (1976; 1988) have far more things to say about markedness, asymmetry, reversibility,
and hierarchy in figurative language than I have space for here. My point has been made as well as I can hope to make it, for
the present: Imaginal and analogical metaphors seem constrained with respect to their reversibility in certain ways which do not
affect the metaicon. The metaicon seems reversible with new insight into the same set of similarities precisely because that "set"
is a broad type and because the two compared object-tokens hold rather equal (symmetrical) membership in that type.
Conversely, the similarity conditions of the diagram, and especially of the image, lack that typological breadth; further, the two
things compared generally do not share the similar quality to the same degree (in perception) or for the same reasonthe
resemblance is not by inheritance in the same ultimate iconic type. Thus, one of the compared referents is characteristically
marked for some narrow attribute; this condition allows the marked referent to serve effectively as an icon

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pro tem of the other referent, but at the same time this markedness creates the metaphor's asymmetry and militates against its
reciprocity.
The apparent asymmetry of imaginal and analogical metaphor is probably due, in part, to the limits and idiosyncrasies of human
perception (perhaps merely my own). But the symmetry of the metaicon itself, I believe, is not at all a simple matter of human
perception. In Peirce's Man-Symbol metaicon, for instance, it is a gross oversimplification to think that human beings merely
"borrow back" those self-revealing attributes which they have unconsciously invested in their own symbols. It is more
accuratethough not yet the whole truth of itto say that there exists between man and all symbols, including his own, a free and
open and equal and thriving commerce of icons. My reading of Peirce has brought me to believe (otherwise I would not be
writing any book at all) that this condition of metaphorical tradeoff is made possible and facilitated, not merely by human
creativity and rationality, but by a certain Reasonableness in the universethe archetypal law of which human reason and
invention, as well as all of nature, are but concrete iconic tokens.
It is also a gross oversimplification, by the way, to think that this or any other metaiconic type can do without its iconic tokens
what it can do with them. In subsequent chapters, I will show that the metaicon, for all its universality and potentiality, is not at
all some sort of mystical, poetic nirvana. It needs the rigor of the Peircean diagram to give it structure (to our minds), the quality
of the Peircean image to give it color (to our senses). Indeed, perhaps the greatest possibility of the metaicon, in the mind of a
Shakespeare or Keats or Sexton or Peirce, is its genetic potential to call out a myriad of analogical and imaginal metaphors,
investing them with its own symmetry and permanently growing significance as it does so. An examination of that kind of
possibility in chapter 4, however, must await the development of a Peircean doctrine of metaphorical possibility in chapter 3.

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III.
FOCUS INTERPRETATION
METAPHORIC POSSIBILITY
AS FIRSTNESS
As suggested in chapter 1, the similarity between the two (or more) things related to each other by a genuine poetic metaphor is
a creative discovery, not a creation, by the poet. The juxtaposition of the opposed and parallel objects is but the linguistic
actualizationa dynamic bringing into sharp existential focusof the real and positive character the two things share. The similarity
takes its distinctive nature, in Peircean terms, from the nature of real possibility, not from the merely verbal mechanism which
calls attention to it. While the poet's metaphorical perception is highly imaginative, the perceived similarity is not imaginary. It
is real. Peirce wrote:
Existence, then, is a special mode of reality, which, whatever other characteristics it possesses, has that of being
absolutely determinate. Reality, in its turn, is a special mode of being, the characteristic of which is that things that are
real are whatever they really are, independently of any assertion about them. (CP 6.349)
I will argue that metaphoric similarity, at least in the case of its best examples in poetry, is real before it "exists" in the mind of
the reader, in the linguistic construct of the metaphor, or in the mind of the poet.
Why does this matter for the study of poetic metaphor? There are several important implications of Peirce's philosophical
realism for a semeiotic of figurative language. First, it implies that not just any fiat of fancy that brings two contrary objects
together in an anomalous connection, however imaginative, can qualify as poetic metaphor. Second, it suggests that the choice
of the metaphoric "vehicle"the icon whose quality, relation of parts, or representative character is necessarily what it is by virtue
of the quality, parts, or character of its objectis not by any means a totally free choice or a "stylistic option"; rather, it is
(broadly) constrained by aesthetic purity and accuracy. Thus the peculiar invented or created circumstances of a poetic metaphor
ought to be evaluated not entirely on their novelty, cleverness, or even their contextual apt-

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ness but also (importantly) on the pointedness with which they instantiate metaphoric truth.
Real similarity is the first postulate of metaphoric truth. Consider a preliminary illustration from John Keats's poem, "Epistle to
My Brother George." It is an appropriate example for considering what the primary substance of the poetic vision is, because
that question is a primary topic of the poem. Keats wonders aloud whether the poet might not see more, when he looks up at the
evening sky, than "the dark silent blue/ With all its diamonds trembling through and through?" (11. 57-58). The question has
answered itself: The poet has already seen, instead of ordinary stars, "trembling diamonds," a striking metaphor which captures,
or at least closely approaches, something of a "primal'' reality not only of the stars but of all energy and life as well.
If we place the disparate objects of the metaphor side by side and consider the nature of their similarities, we may begin to see
what status these similarities really hold. As I read the metaphor, it contains two distinct though interlocking comparisons:
[stars]-to-diamonds, and trembling-to-[sparkling]. Stars are the literal topic or primary object of the first comparison, as evident
from the context (the poet looking up at the evening sky). We expect him to see stars as he gazes at the "dark silent blue," but
he replaces this object in the "frame" with diamonds, the first tension-directed "focus" in the metaphorical complex. I therefore
understand diamonds to be an icon for the object stars. The similarity between stars and diamonds is very simple, of course, as
shown in figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1
We might of course specify more detail about the shared quality of sparkling (such as noting the oscillating crystalline aspect of
the luminosity) but it is not necessary to do so; these details merely analyze what sparkling means. Indeed, a shared "Quality" in
the Peircean sense ought to be thought of as "monadically" as possible (CP 1.424).
Now another reader of the metaphor might have chosen a different similarity; for instance, "high value," relating the height of
the stars, or their literary symbolism of "aspiration," to the diamonds' monetary value. In poetic metaphor, many readings of
similarity (seen as dynamic interpretants) are possible; this is not to say, however, that all such readings are equally productive
(or that all dynamic interpretants will survive the process of "natural selection" in the evolution towards a final interpretant). In
this case, "high value" seems to be an ac-

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ceptable similarity condition if we consider only the connection between stars and diamonds; Keats's poet/speaker no doubt
cherished the stars as other men do diamonds. However, the "value" connection arises from convention (an example of Peircean
Thirdness) and thus leads us astray from our pursuit of the immediate Quality of the image (a Peircean Firstness). My point is
only that the conventional association of "high value," while quite valid when viewed as an additional (analogical) "resonance"
or "overlay" in the metaphor, is not the primary qualitative ground of the figuresparkling (or the like) is the ground, for it is not
only the most immediate sensory connection between stars and diamonds, but it also furnishes a solid foundation from which to
make the next (and far more interesting) interpretive ''leap" in the metaphor, the leap by which "trembling" is tied in. In other
words, once sparkling or the like is established as the similarity between stars and diamonds, sparkling then becomes an object
in itself, a literal topic, for further representation by a second icontrembling.
What I have in mind here, as a two-level process by which we may interpret the metaphor, might be clarified by reference to
Peirce's notion of "prescisive" versus "hypostatic" abstraction. (See Scott 1985: 204-207; Zeman 1982.) Peirce wrote:
The most ordinary fact or perception, such as "it is light," involves prescisive abstraction, or prescission. But hypostatic
abstraction, the abstraction which transforms "it is light" into "there is light here," . .. is a very special mode of thought. It
consists in taking a feature of a percept or percepts (after it has already been prescinded from the other elements of the
percept) . . . , and in conceiving this fact to consist in the relation between the subject of that judgment and another
subject. (CP 4.235)
As Scott explicates it, prescisive abstraction is "the operation by which we pay attention to one feature of a percept without
regard for whatever other elements the percept may have." But hypostatic abstraction "is the logical step which takes over after
the operation of prescission has been performed" (1985: 204). By prescisive abstraction, we isolate an attribute in an object or
objects, and by hypostatic abstraction we then consider that attribute as a substantive, an object in itself, upon which further
mental operations or experiments can then be performed (see also CP 2.364).
As I read it, the Keats metaphor encourages us to use both abstractive processes in a complementary way. First, the mental
juxtaposition of stars and diamonds encourages us to prescind the feature "they twinkle" from the other features of stars and the
feature "they glitter" from the other features of diamonds. Of course we might have prescinded other features, too (such as "they
are high" and "they are valuable"), but I am suggesting that the immediacy of the sensory or imaginal features brings them
forward first (for me). Besides, in prescinding these imaginal features, we find encouraging grounds for going

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further: By hypostatic abstraction we then get "There is sparkling (or the like) here." The twinkle/glitter similarity has become a
substantive upon which further experiments can be performed. One such experiment would surely be to consider how the
substantive sparkling (as a literal object in itself) might be further signified by the icon trembling. In Peirce's terms, the results
from the first (prescisive) judgment become the (hypostatically abstract) subject matter for yet another judgment in relation to a
new predicationtrembling. This reading is schematized in figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2
Keats's introduction of "trembling through and through" is what drives the interpretation of this otherwise mild metaphor onward
(or upward) to an exceedingly abstract, nearly primal reality. Specifically, the interpreter's task, as I see it, is to discover what
further character is shared by the sparkling of a luminous crystalline object and the trembling of some animate organism (the
predicate trembling implies an animate subject). Now note that if "high value" or the like were chosen as the first ground, it
would furnish no hypostatic object for experimentation with the second icon, tremblinghowcould trembling be like ''high value"
in any salient respect? (Perhaps there is some respect, but it is not clear to me.) Thus sparkling or the like must be the First
qualitative ground of the trope, for sparkling and trembling present an immediate and salient (though perhaps unconscious)
shared character.
In whatever way we choose to verbalize this character represented in figure 3.2 as a waveform (~)say, "rapid oscillating motion"
or "structured energetic vibration"it is clear that it is not at all the peculiar invented property of this metaphor. Its most obvious
token today is an energy wave, a recursive sine function whose "motion" is structured in alternating peaks and valleys. It
characterizes light, the atomic vibrations of a crystal, nuclear radiation, radio signals, brain waves, and nerve impulses. In brief,
it is in all that "shines" or "quivers." Abstracted hypostatically on its own, it recalls Aristotle's pronouncement (Metaphysics,
Book 0): "Being is the active principle." Keats's simple metaphor thus drives us to experience, if not to contemplate, a pervasive
reality

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of nature as a Firstness, a "total unanalyzed impression of it," as Peirce described the Firstness of the aesthetic experience (MS
310: 12).
While it is of course unnecessary for a reader to consciously intellectualize this fact in order to understand and enjoy the
metaphor sensitively, I believe that any sensitive and careful reader would feel at least a subliminal moment of "converging
significance," to borrow an expression from Northrop Frye (1957: 117-118), and of certitude in the figure. As a conscious
analyst, I cannot explain these feelings of significance and certitude except by reference to the manifest reality of ~, and the
Firstness of that reality, which unites the metaphor's otherwise disparate elements.
I call it Firstness despite the fact that, to some students of Peirce, it may appear that I am taking great liberties with Peirce's
notion of Firstness by treating the overarching character of Keats's trembling star-diamonds as an instance of such. After all,
energy and force and motion and counter-motion, which are the actual phenomena linking these figurative elements together,
would be for Peirce examples of Secondness, not of Firstness (CP 1.304, 1.322). But I hasten to add that for Peirce there were
different "modes" of Firstness (CP 2.277)"First Firstness," and (thus implied) second and third Firstness in the context of
Peirce's system. I believe that the ~ of this metaphor is an instance of second Firstness. This very representation of it, as a kind
of "frozen" or "hypostatically abstracted" instant of motion, islike the second part of Keats's metaphor itselfprecisely a diagram,
the second and dyadic form of the "modes of Firstness'' Peirce attributes to the Hypoicons (CP 2.277). This notion has already
been developed in chapter 2; for the present, suffice it to say that ~ at least approaches a condition of Firstness, that of a primal
reality abstracted from its accidents in time and space, a pervasive trait which is nonetheless pointedly unique, an isolatable trait
sui generis. I say that the Keats metaphor "approaches" such a condition because the ultimate stuff of the poetic similarity is
positive possibility. The difficulty in so arguing from the Keats metaphor is that Keats has made the ultimate stuff of his
metaphor more than a possibility; he has actualized it (linguistically) in a strikingly concrete way.
Peirce's description of Firstness acknowledges and accommodates the difficulty in discussing Quality (as an instance of
Firstness) from examples of embodied quality:
Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its subject's being positively such as it is regardless of aught else. That
can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that
they have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that they may perhaps come into relation with others.
The mode of being a redness, before anything was yet red, was nevertheless a positive qualitative possibility. And redness
in itself, even if it be embodied, is something positive and suigeneris. (CP 1.25, emphasis added)

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Thus we may say that the possibility or the principle of this distinctive wavelike motion ( ~ ) is a positive reality on the order of
Firstness before its actual embodiment in such diverse phenomena as light and neuro-muscular energy. As scientists discover it
empirically in such diverse phenomena, Keats discovers it metaphorically. It is that sense of discovery that testifies to the reality
of the thing discovered, the thing that is/was real prior to its physical or linguistic embodiment. In other words, Keats (perhaps
without knowing so, consciously) got it right.
In saying that he "got it right," I do not mean to credit Keats (much as I would like to) with having made a "scientific"
discovery ahead of his time. The form of his "hypothesis'' is not technical and explicit, as it would need to be in order to gain
scientific verification; rather, it is metaphorical and implicit. My point is simply that the same reality can be the object of either
kind of hypothesis, scientific or metaphorical, and that what makes the scientific hypothesis prove successful is an indispensable
part (though not the whole) of what makes a metaphorical connection "poetic"its approximation to reality. As Peirce said in his
speech, "The Place of Our Age in the History of Civilization" (CB 12: 13), "the true poet is the true prophet," and "that which
was poetically divined shall be scientifically known."
What I would really like to attribute to poets like Keats, then, is this "divining power" of their metaphors. The metaphors are not
scientific models, but I believe they are formulated by a similar if not exactly the same process that Peirce called "Retroduction .
. . the spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason" (CB 1166: 104). While this "Retroduction" (sometimes called "Abduction"
or "Hypothesis") is by no means infallible and mustin the method of science, at leastbe followed by careful Deductive
elaboration and Inductive testing, Retroduction is the mode of inquiry responsible for all advances of knowledge or new
discoveries, be they "scientific" or otherwise. In the same passage referred to above, Peirce went on to speak of this "instinctive
reason" as a "magical faculty" by which the mind, more likely than not, is attuned to reality. This is not a mystical notion, but a
common sense one, though the faculty Peirce was talking about could be exercised in many different modes of "divining,"
including both scientific and artistic:
Animals of all races rise far above the general level of their intelligence in those performances that are their proper
function, such as flying and nest-building for ordinary birds; and what is man's proper function if not to embody general
ideas in art-creations, in utilities, and above all in theoretical cognition? To give the lie to his own consciousness of
divining the reasons of phenomena would be as silly in a man as it would be in a fledgling bird to refuse to trust to its
wings and leave the nest, because the poor little thing had read Babinet, and judged aerostation to be impossible on
hydrodynamical grounds. (CB 1166: 104)

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Keats's metaphor of star-diamonds "trembling through and through" certainly cannot qualify as what Peirce called a "theoretical
cognition" (it would be absurd to say his metaphor contains a "wave theory" of electromagnetic phenomena). But I believe it
does ''embody the general idea" in another form: that of an "art-creation." With this little metaphor, Keats indeed "trusted his
wings," and "rose above the general level" of his own knowledge, perhaps, to make a discovery.
Perhaps my notion of "discovery" in metaphor can be clarified by comparing and contrasting it with a well-known view, that of
Max Black in his influential book Models and Metaphors (1962).
Black describes three ways of looking at metaphor: the substitution view, the comparison view, and the interaction view (25-
47). The substitution view holds that a metaphorical expression is used in place of (is substituted for) some equivalent literal
expression. For instance, "Richard is a lion" would be seen merely as a substitute for "Richard is brave" or some other such
paraphrase. The comparison view holds that metaphor is the presentation of an implied or underlying similarity and is literally
expressible as a simile. For instance, "Richard is a lion" would mean simply "Richard is like a lion (in being brave, etc.)." Thus
the comparison view is really only a special case of the substitution view, as Black points out, in that the comparison view treats
metaphor as a mere shortcut substitute for simile.
Black rejects both these views in favor of the interaction theory, which he attributes to I. A. Richards (1936, 1938). This theory
holds that the meaning of metaphor is neither that of a literal comparison nor that of a literal substitute of any kind. Rather, the
meaning of metaphor is "produced" when our thoughts about the two things in the metaphor are "active together" or "interact."
The overall theory of metaphor I have proposed in chapter 1 on Peircean grounds is sympathetic with that of Richards and Black
in saying that "meaning" involves "interaction"; while this is not peculiar to metaphor, I believe Richards and Black are right to
call special attention to it in metaphor, which does involve an unusually powerful semantic index (its "tension," as I will argue
further in chapter 5). A complete Peircean account of metaphor ought to treat it as the complex and semantically creative sign it
is, a blending of iconic similarity, indexical interaction, and symbolic generality with all the growth potential thus implied.
According to Peirce, any "sufficiently complete" symbol includes an index, just as any sufficiently complete index includes an
icon (NEM 4: 256); in my view, poetic metaphor is an example par excellence of the "complete symbol" as Peirce would have
it. For this reason, I consider it a gross oversimplification of metaphor, especially of poetic metaphor, to reduce it to a
comparison, that is, to treat it as a pure icon. As Ransdell (1979: 55),

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Anderson (1984a: 97-98), and others make clear, an "iconic sign" is not a pure icon, but a more complex sign embodying a
(dominant) icon proper. When Peirce treated the iconic aspect of metaphor, as we have seen in chapter 2, he was careful to make
this distinction, calling the metaphor a hypoicon (CP 2.276277). If the substitution or comparison theory does indeed hold that
metaphor "consists in" the presentation of a similarity as Black says it does (35), then I believe he is absolutely correct in
rejecting that view.
However, to say that metaphor does not "consist in" comparison and should therefore not be "reduced to" similarity is not at all
to say, as Black seems to imply, that we ought to eliminate comparison from the account of interactive metaphor, or to deny that
a genuine poetic metaphor depends on objectively real similarity. That would be to eliminate, from the symbolic/indexical
complex of the metaphor, its critical iconic core, an important catalyst of its interactive magic. (I will shortly show exactly how
this interactive magic of metaphor is vitiated by doubtful iconic underpinnings in the metaphorical index.)
Because in Peirce's opinion the similarity between the icon and its object is objectively real, one of the great values of the icon
in his theory is that it can be manipulated to reveal other possible but otherwise hidden properties of its object (CP 4.530; CB
296: 182; CB 1128: 492-493). For this reason, it is "a great distinguishing property of the icon," Peirce said, to reveal
"unexpected truth" (CP 2.279). In his "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism," Peirce wrote that Icons "have more to do
with the living character of truth than have either Symbols or Indices" (CB 1128: 496; CP 4.531). The object of the icon need
not be an actually existent thing in Peirce's viewin fact, it may be a "pure fiction as to its existence'' (496), an important
qualification which makes his formulation of the icon all the more relevant to literary study. Thus a Peircean "aesthetic" of
poetic metaphor should not be a purely "representational" or "mimetic" aesthetic like those criticized by Kaelin (1982).
Nevertheless, I hasten to add, as Peirce did: "But there is one assurance that the Icon does afford in the highest degree. Namely,
that which is displayed before the mind's gaze,the Form of the Icon, which is also its object,must be logically possible" (CB
1128: 496; CP 4.531, emphasis CSP's). The necessary logical (semeiotic) possibility of the iconic object, and not its mere
existence in physical nature, is the essence of its reality as far as the poet is concerned. Peirce wrote:
Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the
mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within the mind. Their very airy-
nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking
them, saves their Reality. (CB 1166: 91, emphasis CSP's)
The poetic icon/object Idea is therefore real, in Peirce's view, even before it is

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an actual thought in someone's mind. In fact, Peirce explicitly argued in the 1906 "Prolegomena," as we have just seen, that all
icons are reducible to antecedent forms in their objects (see also Ransdell 1979). This clearly grounds iconicity in reality and
shows that the correct Peircean view of metaphor is to think of its similarity condition as a creative discovery, not as a mere
invention, by both poet and reader.
Now Black understands this character of the icon as conceived by Peirce, for he quotes Peirce's definition of the Icon (CP 2.247)
in his discussion of models (Black 1962: 221). But Black seems to reserve objective iconicity for models (238), and so (by
default) would apparently reject Peirce's treatment of metaphors as iconic signs (CP 2.277). Despite his praise of a "memorable
metaphor" as one which can "enable us to see a new subject matter in a new way" (236-237), Black distinguishes models from
metaphors on the grounds that "a metaphor operates largely with commonplace implications" (239, emphasis Black's). Thus the
"new way" in which a 'memorable metaphor'' helps us to "see a new subject matter" apparently has nothing to do, in Black's
opinion, with any salient objective reality. It is just here that I depart sharply from Black.
It is also just here that Black departs from Richards, I might add. Black chastises Richards for the "lapse" of saying that the
"common characteristics" of the two terms in the metaphor constitute "the ground of the metaphor" (Black 1962: 39). Richards
is closer to the truth, Black argues, when he says that the reader is "forced to 'connect' the two ideas" (but "forced" is Black's
term). What is meant by this "forced connection"? For Black it apparently means, in part, the subjective (or cultural) imposition
of a provisional relationship. For instance, Black warns against the "temptation to think of similarities as 'objectively given,""
suggesting instead that metaphor often evokes "some imputed connection" (emphasis mine). In such cases, which presumably
Black would consider the more complex and interesting cases (45), he thinks it is more accurate "to say that the metaphor
creates the similarity than to say that it formulates some similarity antecedently existing" (37).
Black's intent, I believe, is to emphasize the value of fresh poetic metaphor and to avoid a theory of metaphor based exclusively
on prefabricated, moribund "reach-me-downs" (43); with that intent I am entirely sympathetic. But I believe that Black has
misplaced the (crucial) distinction between trivial and arresting metaphor: It is not, as he implies, the antecedence of a
metaphor's similarity condition which trivializes it; that condition is merely its iconic foundation in reality. Reality need not be
dull or commonplace or trivial. And metaphoric truth need not be a truism. What trivializes a metaphor is the antecedence
(better, the redundancy) of a particular linguistic actualization of the metaphorical reality, as in hackneyed cases. But more
important, a new metaphor can be trivial, too; one cause of this is the very characteristic that Black mistakenly at-

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tributes to the interesting casesa "forcing of connections." Far from making it truly "creative" in a poetic sense, a metaphor's ad
hoc imposition of an alleged "similarity" that has little or no objective reality outside the metaphor itself is a prime factor in
making that metaphor seem "contrived." Conversely, it is exactly the sense of a deep antecedent reality about a poetic
metaphorical resemblance which quickly follows the surprise of its discovery to give assurance of its substantive value.
My position is not that the metaphor's value is limited to that antecedent reality, but rather that its valuewhich does indeed
include the creation of new configurations of meaningis rooted in the possibility of it, a permanent field supporting the growth
of the trope throughout its life cycle and abiding after its death to foster countless new tropes. The poetic metaphor is "creative"
not in creating its own ground but in making something of it, thereby revealing new things about it. If it "forces" us to do
anything, it forces us to notice and appreciate, perhaps to cultivate further, rich iconic ground whose fertility might otherwise
have been overlooked entirely or neglected as unremarkable.
Does this matter? What difference does it make if we say, with Black, that the arresting metaphor "forces" the reader to invent
or impose similarity instead of maintaining, as I do, that the poetic metaphor naturally "reveals" an antecedent reality which it
then imaginatively expands upon? Walker Percy (1975) has given an excellent answer:
It is the cognitive dimension of metaphor which is usually overlooked, because cognition is apt to be identified with
conceptual and discursive knowing. Likeness and difference are canons of discursive thought, but analogy, the mode of
poetic knowing, is also cognitive. Failure to recognize the discovering power of analogy can only eventuate in a
noncognitive psychologistic theory of metaphor. There is no knowing, there is no Namer and Hearer, there is no world
held in common; there is only an interior "transaction of contexts" in which psychological processes interact to the reader's
titillation. (77)
Although I think Peirce would not accept Percy's implied distinction between "likeness" and "analogy," or the reduction of all
metaphor to mere analogy (see chapter 2), Percy's well-placed criticism of the anti-cognitive "psychologistic" view of metaphor
strongly reminds me of Peirce's attack in The Monist on James Mills's nominalistic view of similarity (reprinted in Ketner and
Cook 1975: 3536).
Mr. Percy, in turn, might well disapprove the "discursive" tone of much in my argumentand I certainly do not wish to exclude
intuition or feeling from metaphorical cognition. While avoiding a "logocentric" view of metaphorical "knowing," I wish only to
deny (emphatically) that there is anything at all relativistic about the premise or irrational about the manner of that "knowing":
Our intimations of similarity in poetic metaphor are reasonable because that

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similarity is real. My goal in this chapter's emphasis, then, is identical with Mr. Percy's: "The essence of metaphorical truth and
the almost impossible task of the poet is, it seems me, to name unmistakably and yet to name by such a gentle analogy that the
thing beheld by both of us may be truly formulated for what it is" (73). The icon (within its often violent index) is "gentle"
because it is perfectly natural, not imposed; and it gives the feeling of "naming unmistakably" because it is revealingly accurate.
Peirce would surely caution against the prescriptive use of my approach, for he urged Lady Welby that her "extreme insistence
on accuracy of metaphor ... might well be tempered" (PW 11). Still, I believe he would approve my appropriation of his
wordson the clarity of aesthetic beauty in generalas a description of poetic metaphor in particular. After expressing doubts that
there is "any such quality'' as "esthetic badness," Peirce wrote:
Of course, some will say that there is no such Quality as beauty either,that it is a name given to whatever we love to
contemplate regardless of any reasons for liking it, that what one man finds to his taste is not to the taste of another, and
that de gustibus non est disputandum. Probably the majority of people regard that maxim as having no other possible
meaning than that there is no valid standard of taste, and nothing per se beautiful. Yet there is equally no disputing
whether the sun is bright and hot, although even the physicist will allow the reality of radiant energy. It is not a question
to dispute about; but the reason is that it is selfevident; and perhaps the same thing may be true of beauty. (MS 310: 8-9)
Now what part does the metaphorical icon play in the beautiful (poetic) metaphor? It is certainly not the whole. Peirce went on
in the same manuscript to say,
the esthetic Quality appears to me to be the total unanalyzable impression of a reasonableness that has expressed itself in a
creation. It is a pure Feeling but a feeling that is the impress of a Reasonableness that Creates. It is the Firstness that truly
belongs to a Thirdness in its achievement of Secondness. (MS 310: 13)
I would apply this superb notion of beauty to the poetic metaphor as follows: Such a metaphor is a Firstness (a real and positive
possibility) that belongs to a Thirdness (acquires symbolic power, generality, and growth for the mind of poet and reader)
through its achievement of Secondness (forceful indexical interaction between the metaphor's juxtaposed elements). In other
words, we cannot talk about the beauty of the metaphor without talking about its truth, and that discussion must begin (though it
must not end) with the question of reality as represented by the metaphorical icon.
As a further illustration of what this means, consider how it might affect our interpretation of a metaphor Black uses to talk
about metaphor. As my own reliance on expository metaphor would indicate, I agree with Black that there is "no quarrel with
the use of metaphors (if they are good ones) in talking about

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metaphor," but that we must take care not to be "misled by the adventitious charms of our favorites." Black then gives his
favorite: "Let us try, for instance, to think of a metaphor as a filter" (39).
After illustrating this concept with the metaphor "Man is a wolf" (which I will examine shortly), Black then offers this extension
of his "filter" analogy:
Suppose I look at the night sky though a piece of heavily smoked glass on which certain lines have been left clear. Then I
shall see only the stars that can be made to lie on the lines previously prepared upon the screen, and the stars I do see will
be seen as organized by the screen's structure. We can think of metaphor as such a screen and the system of "associated
commonplaces" of the focal word as the network of lines upon the screen. We can say that the principal subject is "seen
through" the metaphorical expressionor, if we prefer, that the principal subject is "projected upon" the field of the
subsidiary subject. (41)
Now suppose you discover such a piece of smoked glass inserted like a "lens filter" in some sort of "telescope" device that
someone has mounted on a tripod and pointed at the heavens. Curious what it may be, you look through the device at the night
sky. Of course the stars you see will lie in a pattern delineated by the clear lines in the smoked glass, but so what? What would
you then think of this pattern? Would it interest you at all to find out what the significance of it might be?
Someone might well answer, "I already know the 'significance,' as you say, in the pleasure of just looking at the stars in this
new way." So be it. But if you wish to know anything else about it, I believe you must begin (though this is only a beginning)
with the question whether the pattern of stars you see when you look through the glass corresponds in any way (exactly or
approximately) to any objective pattern of stars in the sky, or whether the apparent configuration of stars is purely the function
(fiction? figment?) of the smoked-glass pattern.
For instance, suppose the design in the glass consists of a clear circle with a clear spot roughly in the center, and when you look
through it at the sky, you see a rough circle of stars with a big star in the center. Among the many possibilities are at least these
two extremes: (1) The circle of stars you see with a big star in the center actually form some sort of star system, say, a "star
burst" in which hundreds of smaller stars have actually sprayed out at roughly equal distances from their mother star, like a
Roman candle fireball that went off eons ago, hitherto unnoticed among the profusion of other slow-motion cosmic fireworks.
(2) The stars in the circle pattern are actually only members of a much more generalized chaos of stars, or of a star system very
unlike the design in your lens filter; the fact that you happen to see them as forming a circle around a center is simply because
your device has superimposed that appearance,

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and you might just as well get roughly the same appearance by pointing the device at any random group of stars in any sector of
the sky.
We need not go into the kinds of experiments you would have to perform in order to investigate these possibilities further. My
purpose is simply to inquire what is implied by Black's "filter" metaphor-about-metaphor. Specifically, what are our
presumptions about metaphor? Do we presume that this lens filter of metaphor, on account of its very character as "poetic," is
bound to superimpose, upon the object(s) in its focus, certain constructions that are ultimately nothing more than the playful and
titillating configurations of the poet's mind? Or is it possible, just possible, that these configurations of the poet's mind (playful
or not) might actually enhance real and really important properties of the object(s)? These presuppositions about reality are
crucial in our approach to metaphor. What would your suspicions be about the smoked-glass lens you found pointed at the stars?
Black, I believe, would be quick to point out that our suspicions about this little "telescope" would be conditioned by the setting
in which we first found it. For instance, how would your suspicions about the smoked-glass pattern differ, depending on
whether you found the device in an astronomer's observatory or under the skylight in the studio of an artist?
Provided that the setting was the scientist's observatory, even Black might suspect that the smoked-glass pattern was designed to
reveal or enhance some antecedent pattern of stars. In other words, especially if he found "systematic complexity" (239) in the
design, he might test it out as a model. The test would try to determine whether or not the design was
isomorphic with its domain of application. So there is a rational basis for using the model. In stretching the language by
which the model is described in such a way as to fit the new domain, we pin our hopes upon the existence of a common
structure in both fields. If the hope is fulfilled, there will have been an objective ground for the analogical transfer. (238)
On the other hand, if Black found the device in the artist's studio, and if the pattern in the smoked glass was sufficiently "brief"
(238) and used "commonplace" markings or shapes in it (239), I presume that he would suspect it to be something closer to a
metaphor. That would presumably make it the kind of "filter" which superimposes its own invented or subjective configurations
upon whatever is viewed through it.
Now my intention is not to belittle the distinction between scientific models and poetic metaphors, but to raise certain questions
about where Black draws this distinction. Why should the "complexity" of the scientific model give it a more "rational basis"
than the metaphor? Does this mean that the conceptual basis of metaphor is irrational? Why should the greater "brevity" of the

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metaphor, let alone the fact that its vocabulary of signs is drawn from the great common and collective experience of humanity,
make it any less likely to have an "objective ground" than a model? Does this mean that a long statement about uncommon
things is more likely to be true?
No one is asking to have poetic metaphors tested in a laboratory, but in respect to the "pinning of hopes" for an "isomorphism"
between reality and the signs in which we understand it, aren't we all, in one sensescientists no less than poets"seeing through a
glass darkly"? To be sure, the "proverbial knowledge'' which Black says is the "only" sort we need to make and interpret
metaphors (239) is eminently fallible, full of misconceptions, and not (as far as we know) to be equated with the state of
knowledge in contemporary science. But what if Black were wrong about "proverbial knowledge" being the only thing we use to
make and interpret metaphor? What if there is something more than "proverbial knowledge" that goes into a good metaphor?
And what if this "something more" were what Peirce called "the spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason," that same
abductive faculty of original insight which accounts, not only for the universal ideas embodied in all 'art-creations," but for
every major advance of science as well? (See CB 1165: 104.)
In other words, what ifin that artist's studio late one nightwhile you were looking at the stars through a particularly arresting
design in one of the artist's smoked-glass etchings, you saw . . . in just that one particular sector of the heavens... !
And this does not even address the possibility that a distinctive though neverbefore-noticed pattern of stars shining in perfect
alignment through an extremely ornate etching in glass might itself be part of an ingenious icon whose object is a real feeling,
perhaps of some more universal order yet.
The example of metaphor Black uses to show how his filter works does not indicate that he has considered such a possibility.
Though the "Man is a wolf" metaphor is hardly worth it, Black gives a detailed account of how the trope sends the reader off to
search his knowledge of wolves-not so much the dictionary knowledge of wolf as its "system of associated commonplaces" (40),
or what Eco calls the "encyclopedia" (1984: chapter 3)-in order to find out what the wolfmetaphor may be construed to say
about Man. All this wolf knowledge (and Black is careful to note how it may differ from culture to culture) then serves as a
"filter" or cognitive screen through which the interpreter views Man. Black concludes, "The wolf-metaphor suppresses some
details, emphasizes othersin short, organizes our view of man" (41, emphasis Black's).
For me, this wolf-metaphor does nothing of the sort. It does not affect my view of anything at all, let alone bring about the
rather profound effect of "organizing my view of man." In fairness to Black, he used this example in order to keep his
explanation of metaphor simple, but that is just the problem with

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his explanation: Interesting, arresting metaphors simply do not put forth such vapid generalities as "Man is a wolf." Rather, they
put forth claims which are usually much more specific and always much more substantive as to the possible character and
connection of the objects they juxtapose; such hypotheses, although metaphorical, can actually be accepted for their revealing
insights or rejected for their dangerous distortions. (Perhaps Black would agree, but then I should have to ask: Insights into
what, or distortions of what?) Once a metaphor's basic iconic ground has been accepted, as a feasible and substantive hypothesis
at least, then I agree it really does begin to "organize" our views, as Black says. I would go further: If the new extensions and
configurations of meaning which result from this organization tend to confirm and deepen our understanding of the metaphor's
iconic ground, then we have more than a merely engaging metaphor; we have one which is "poetic" in the finest sense, the sense
in which poetry can shape not only our views but perhaps even the quality and conduct of our livesthe highest grade of clarity
an idea can achieve, as Peirce would have it (see W 3: 266).
In sum, no trope can seriously hope to "organize our view" of a thing unless it advances an honest and significant proposal
about what the organization of that thing really is. Although it is theoretically possible, in actual practice we simply do not pick
just any two concepts and start "interacting" them. From immediate to final interpretant, the meaning of poetic metaphor reacts
to a substantive icon.
Consider Shakespeare's wolf-icon in Ulysses' famous speech from Troilus and Cressida (I.iii.119-124). Ulysses pictures what
will happen in society when rational law and order are overthrown:
Then every thing include itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite,
And appetite, an universal wolf
(So doubly seconded with will and power),
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
Here, it is not just anything or everything about Man and Wolf which the reader is left to consider and "force" together in some
culturally or subjectively arbitrary way. No, at the core of the metaphor is rather a specific and substantive hypothesis of real
similarity: When a whole society of creatures refuses to be ruled by any law or principle higher than its own appetites, then
appetite itself becomes a "universal wolf"; being "universal" (finding nothing but other vestiges of its own wolfishness
everywhere it turns in society), it must perforce become a "universal prey" and ''last eat up himself." Here is no fanciful
werewolf, but the real beastliness of man: the unbridled appetite of the animal for power, that feeds upon itself and perpetually
threatens the human species

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with self-annihilation. True, no literal paraphrase can substitute for the dramatic effect Shakespeare achieves by "superimposing
the filter" of this cannibal/wolf icon upon this particular aspect of human nature, but the spectacle we thus behold, the part that
comes through the filter, if you will, we ought to recognize as an all-too-real human capacity for savagery. We must not think
for a moment that it is some figment of Shakespeare's imagination, an illusion in smoked glass, else we are bound to miss part
of what endows this passage with lasting significance. Although the truth of this significance may be a very "old" truth,
Shakespeare's metaphor crystallizes it and revitalizes it in such a way that it strikes us with the force of an important revelation
or discovery: It is a Firstness that truly belongs to a Thirdness in its achievement of Secondness.
Two objections naturally arise at this point to this treatment of metaphoric similarity as an instance of Peircean Firstness,
however: (1) If a First is "such as it is regardless of aught else," as Peirce said, how can a "similarity" qualify as such? Isn't a
similarity a relation between two or more things? (For a thorough discussion of a similar problem, see Vaught 1986). (2)
Further, if something like redness is a First Quality, how can a poet's perception of such Quality be accorded the status of
"discovery"? Shall we congratulate a poet for having discovered something like redness in two objects? Isn't the whole notion
trivial?
Let us consider the second of these objections first. It is true that redness and other such qualities are Peirce's most frequently
selected examples of Quality. Redness in fact is an excellent example, given Peirce's pedagogical purposes, for at least two
reasons. First, it is a simple sense quality and is therefore easily thought of monadically by his readers. Second, it is a well-
known quality, one that has long ago been "discovered" and fully codified in both our linguistic and extra-linguistic cultures. But
these same two reasons make redness an unfair counterexample to my thesis of "discovery" in poetic metaphor.
Besides the ordinary sense qualities which predominate in Peirce's didactic passages on Quality, his notion of Firstness includes
much more, as Shapiro has pointed out (1983: 29). Associated with Firstness are also the characteristics of freshness, life,
freedom, immediacy, feeling, vivacity, independence (CP 1.302-303, 1.357, 6.32). When such general characteristics of the
category of Firstness are considered, I believe Peirce would agree that there is an infinitude of other qualities which have not
even been embodied in actuality, let alone been discovered. Few of these are actually apprehensible to our simple senses, for
Peirce describes them as "embracing endless varieties," of which all we know "are but minute fragments" (NEM 4: 332).
For my purposes, the best evidence of this is the fact that when a poetic metaphor discovers a new similarity, we can hardly find
a name for it, though

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we can immediately feel both its rightness and its reality. Consider this example from Alaskan poet Tom Sexton's "A December
Walk" (1985: 11. 1-3):
Our words float before us
In fine syllabic nets
Of frost ....
Though I never before have imagined the intricate lattice of frozen breath (from spoken words on a very cold day) as floating in
"syllabic nets of frost," the tropedespite its originalityimmediately strikes me as sensorially correct and qualitatively unified. It
gives an instantaneous feeling of composing a general yet distinctive whole. And this it achieves despite the notable facts that it
is composed of radically disparate elements, that it appeals to a hybrid of several senses (ocular, tactile, auditory), and that it is
"analyzable" (only partly and unsatisfactorily, please note) as consisting of a variety of features-"connectedness," "delicacy,"
"intricacy,'' and so forth. No one of these features adequately names the gestalt-like character of the whole.
Likewise, it is possible to "analyze" an ordinary and well-known quality like redness, when we really think of a particular
instance of it, as having a certain luminosity, vividness, hue, saturation, and so forth. It is also possible to think of red in relation
to other colors (in sharp contrast with green, for instance), or even synaesthetically across other senses (especially tactile). And
yet redness is a monadic Quality which is distinctively what it is "regardless of aught else." The point of calling it "independent"
and "monadic" is not to say that it has, or can have, no relation to anything else, or that it is impossible to describe its individual
features. Rather, its "monadic independence" is in the fact that we need not analyze it or contrast it to anything else in order to
think of an instance of it and hold it in mind. Even naming it, let alone describing it, seems almost unnecessary or futile, for
such mental manipulations of the Quality do not facilitate our primary and immediate feeling for its predominating wholeness
and unity.
However, unlike redness, the similarity brought home by Sexton's metaphor above cannot be labeled with any satisfactory single
name I can think of. The metaphor discovers a new possibility, one which has not previously been codified linguistically, but
one which is nevertheless palpably real and sui generis. Nothing about such a "discovery" is trivial. It is one of the principal
ways in which good poetry expands the mind beyond the known, thereby making room for other associations beyond the initial
similarity discovered. In the Sexton metaphor, for instance, it is the compelling sense of discovery (of the primary similarity in
the words-to-nets connection) which causes the mind to seize upon the trope, turning it over and over to see what further secrets
it may yield. The result perhaps is the faintest echo of an unspoken narrative text beyond the

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primary (implicit) analogy. That is, perhaps beyond the fully "crystallized" connection of words/syllables to a network/lattice in
the frosty air is the further hint of the sort of "nets" which are used to ''capture" things, "syllabic nets," which might be used to
try to "capture thoughts." If this association is pursued, especially as we realize that what "floats" captured in these nets of frost
is not literally "words" but the frozen breath left behind by the words, then a poignant evanescence arises from the figure, a
feeling of words that escape the breath, and of thoughts which (all the more so) cannot be captured in those words. Quite
effectively, we are left (like the "us" in the poem?) staring at the empty "nets" of mere "syllables" in the frozen air.
Thus one discovery of a new and salient similarity invites the search for other possibilities, or at least provokes that sense of the
ineffable, the feeling that "more is there, if only it could be discovered."
But what of the more ordinary sense qualities where poetic metaphor is concerned? Perhaps it is fair to say that the "discovery"
of an already discovered quality like redness in metaphor is an even greater challenge for the poet, for in this case it must be a
significant re-discovery in order to deserve our attention and increase our understanding. When poetic metaphor achieves this,
the felt force of the gestalt is often doubled, as the surprise of discovery is immediately followed and fortified by a powerful
sense of having just rememberedor perhaps of having just really noticed for the first timesomething very important but long
forgotten or ignored.
I find an instance of this in a stanza from Bink Noll's "Lunch on Omaha Beach" (Gordon 1973: 82-83). The speaker in the poem
recounts a picnic he had on the D-Day beach, years after the famous invasion of 1944. In the first five stanzas, the speaker
laments the fact that the ugly signs of war have been cleaned up. To prevent our forgetting the horrors of war, he says, the
bodies should have been left right where they fell in the sand, not "conveyed" away from sight and "deposited" in tidy
government graveyards. Then comes stanza six:
To honor my thoughts against shrines, to find
The beast who naked wakes in us and walks
In flags, to watch the color of his day
I spill my last Bordeaux into the sand.
Now the blood-wine metaphor is not new; what is striking about Noll's presentation of the metaphor, it seems to me, is his re-
discovery of the Quality of redness upon which the connection (in part) is predicated. Of course we are already aware that blood
and wine are "red" liquids, but there is a tendency to think of the blood-wine color similarity as an arbitrary or conventional
(Eucharistic) conception. After all, the "redness" of a cut fingera rather clear case of red

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is not much like the color of "red" Bordeaux, which is rather more purple than red. Just as "white" is a conventional name for
wine that is optically clear or yellow, so "red" has always seemed a rather arbitrary label for richer, darker wines.
However, on first seeing Noll's "last Bordeaux" poured out in libation upon the beach, we see a real and salient connection
between the color of red wine and that of human blood, not of the bright little drop of blood on a pricked finger, but of the dark
stain spreading out on the white sand around a fallen soldier. This blood, we see, really is the color of Noll's last Bordeaux, and
the color mattersif we enter the spirit of the poem, we now feel we ought to see exactly what human blood on the beach looks
like. Thus the old blood-wine metaphor, with all its many other ancient resonances, is made compellingly vivid and "new"
again, by means of the poet's rediscovery of an ordinary sense quality, a Quality sui generis. While the context of the poem is
what uncovers this connection, there is nothing arbitrary about the quality of it, nor is it the peculiar provision of Noll's
metaphor; the metaphor simply recaptures an old, forgotten, but very poignant truth.
The commonness and simplicity of Peircean sense qualities, therefore, in no way preclude the sense of discovery they present to
us in truly poetic metaphor; on the contrary, the "obviousness" of the qualities is often the very attribute of them which the
metaphor turns to powerful advantage. When a quality has already been codified and conventionalized in language or in culture
or in literature, the good metaphor's function is not just to "trade upon" that convention, but to revitalize it by turning it over to
expose its underlying and motivating ground in the original qualities (which, because of human limits, are often simple sense
qualities). Among the many factors which distinguish the most successful poetic metaphors, then, this surely is one: The
pathways of their often sinuous complexity keep leading back (through Thirdness and Secondness) to an original Firstness, an
antecedent possibility.
Now what of the first objection to my "discovery" thesis, the objection that metaphoric similarity cannot be granted the status of
Firstness since a similarity is a relation between two or more things? Shapiro's explanation of Firstness is helpful and accords
with what we have already observed about prescisive and hypostatic abstraction as a means of discovering Firstness:
Although an indefinite aggregate of individual things may resemble one another through a common trait or quality, and
may be contrasted with all individuals devoid of this same trait or quality, the trait or quality can be abstracted from the
things which have it or lack it, i.e., be isolated and considered in itself apart from the individual things which share or fail
to share it..... Firstness is the possibility that some quality may be abstracted or isolated, which would then render it fit to
be considered as a unity without parts or elements, without explanatory

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antecedents or causal consequents. It is the independence of Firstness that allows Peirce to associate it most closely with
ideas of freedom, spontaneity, and originality. (Shapiro 1983: 30)
What makes Noll's blood-wine metaphor "original," whereby it seems "spontaneous" despite its long cultural and literary
tradition, is in part its re-discovery of a distinctly independent quality of redness. Admittedly, in the interpretation of this
particular metaphor (as opposed to the Keats metaphor I have discussed) there is no apparent value in thinking of this redness
(hypostatically) in the abstract, apart from its blood-wine embodiment. My insistence that this redness can be thought of
independently of its embodiment is motivated only by the necessity of considering what phenomenological and ontological status
metaphoric similarity actually holds. Not every "abstraction," as we will see, holds such a positive iconic statusof which status
merely one test is the question of whether it can be held in mind independently of the set of objects from which it is abstracted.
The question is not whether the quality would ever have come into mind without the objects which embody it, but simply
whether it can be thought of independently of them. If it cannot be thought of independently, we must assume that it is merely a
"nominal" construct, a provisional fabrication which has no positive status. But if it can be so thought of, we have one evidence
(self-evidence, not infallible but hardly dubitable) of its positive character.
Truly poetic metaphor is distinguishable from the "contrived" variety on this very basis (among others of course). In what
sometimes presents itself as "poetic metaphor" (but is not, by my account), there is no sense of a genuine discovery; in such
cases, as we will see, the invention and interpretation of similarity may be intelligible and even clever, but it is still subjective,
fabricated, provisional, often fanciful. Conversely, in the most successful poetic metaphor, the "invention" is the uncovering of
salience, and the interpretation is the discovery of Firstness. It often makes us wonder why we had not thought of it
beforeimplying that we could have, if only we had been as accurately perceptive as the poet.
Thus, although the semantic opposition between the terms of a good metaphor is most often (with good reasonchapter 5) held
responsible for its "originality," the similarity condition between the terms is also an important part of the metaphor's
"spontaneity and originality-and this because (in the best examples) it is a Peircean Firstness, which precedes the metaphor's
linguistic embodiment of it in a Secondness. To solve this apparent paradox, we have only to distinguish between the act of
perceiving and the independent Firstness of the thing perceived. Positive Possibles or potentials, which I suggest are the ultimate
ground of the most "original" metaphoric similarities, were for Peirce clearly objective, independent, and real. Because I agree
with that, I consider

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it a mistake to think of poetic similarity as a Hegelian synthesis (which corresponds to Peirce's Thirdness, not Firstness; see PW
28). It may well be that poets use something like a Hegelian dialectic to arrive at the perception of unity they are always finding
in diversity (though I rather suspect that their insights are spontaneous and immediate); it may well be that none of us can arrive
at a new notion of Firstness except through Secondness and Thirdness (as we have already seen from the exercise of prescisive
and hypostatic abstraction in the Keats metaphor). But what we finally see, in poetic similarity, is not the means but the
(immediate) end, not the spectacle of a poet's mind at work, struggling to synthesize some clever connection for an incongruous
set of entities, but a compellingly self-evident Firstness.
Though poetic metaphor is certainly responsible for the creation (not just the discovery) of many new configurations of
meaning, the most immediate pleasure and satisfaction it affords, I believe, arises from a "harmony" between the mind and the
clear Firstness of a precedent iconic reality the poet has suddenly struck upon. Peirce's description of the icon itself seems to fit
this notion (CP 2.299):
The Icon has no dynamical connection with the object it represents; it simply happens that its qualities resemble those of
that object, and excite analogous sensations in the mind for which it is a likeness. But it really stands unconnected with
them.
Surely this excitation of "analogous sensations in the mind" is part of the instant pleasure of poetic metaphor. To be sure, the
metaphoric icon would not excite these sensations (regardless of any inherent potential it may have to do so) without the
inventiveness of the poet in juxtaposing the icon with its object. Of course the interpreter's mind must also have a structure
which is sympathetic to this iconicity in order to experience it; there must be an isomorphism between the mind and the
similarity condition. The mind thus creatively discovers and experiences the iconic resemblance, but the mind does not create
the distinctive character of it. In what I have described as "degenerate" poetic metaphor in chapter 2, at least, it often "simply
happens" that the icon resembles its object in certain respects and that these excite the mind; the icon itself is "unconnected with
them," meaning both the iconic object and the mind. The first power of the metaphoric connection is therefore its independent
(and I believe natural) similarity, not its humannessexcept that humanity has "a natural bent in accordance with nature's,'' an
axiom upon which rests all our hope of understanding nature, as Peirce said (CP 6.477).
Ironically, though, the naturalness of the metaphorical icon to the mind may make it seem that a poet has not discovered
anything unique in finding a similarity between two things. Besides, even the set of possible Qualities is infinite (NEM 4: 332).
And so it may seem that "anything goes" when we consider the possibilities for metaphor. Doubtless this is true, in one sense. In

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arguing for the distinctiveness of poetic metaphor, I do not intend to prescribe its limits; I wish only to describe part of its
special character. While it must be allowed that "anything goes" as far as metaphor is concerned, it is not in fact the case that
any and every possibility is equally likely to suggest itself to the poetic mind in metaphorical thought. On the contrary,
metaphorical thoughtnot in spite of but because of its extreme sensitivity to suggestionis more likely to apprehend certain kinds
of possibility, namely those which are the most universal but intensely real. This may have been what poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti had in mind when he defined the poet as "the super realist," a notion that cuts squarely against the grain of popular
misconceptions about poetry (Perrine, 1983: 526).
But how can these things be? How can there be different kinds of possibility? How can some of them be more "intensely real"
than others? Is a possibility not just a possibility? Is reality not all one fabric? Certainly not for Peirce. He taught that there were
degrees or grades of reality (CP 1.175; W 1: 500501) and had worked out an extremely elaborate and imaginative theory not just
of being but of becoming (see MSS 940-942, which most likely form a single unit). The rather esoteric details of this need not
concern us here; for its relevance to the possibility of poetic metaphor, the important point is that ideas, viewed as possibilities,
have their own potentialand in varying degreesto exert a causative influence on both existence and mind ("causative" in the
sense of a final rather than efficient cause; for an extensive treatment of final causation, see Short 1981a, Shapiro 1985b, and
discussion in my chapter 7). This notion, in Peirce's words, involves the admittedly
extreme position that every general idea has more or less power of working itself out into fact; some more so, some less
so. Some ideas, the harder and more mechanical ones, actualize themselves first in the macrocosm; and the mind of man
receives them by submitting to the teachings of nature. Other ideas, the more spiritual and moral ones, actualize
themselves first in the human heart, and pass to the material world through the agency of man. (CP 2.149)
These ideas, whether through nature or via the original imagination, present themselves to us, according to Peirce, in at least
three degrees of persistence: the merely interrogative, the more or less plausible, and the "irresistible" (CB 1166: 104; W 3: 317-
319). While not even an "irresistible belief" should be considered infallible, this persistence of a possibility is one portent of its
degree of reality: "The reality of things consists in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no
such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then, is persistence, is regularity" (CP 1.175). Peirce described abduction, in part,
as "a surrender to the insistence of an idea" (MS 442: 2). He also extended his notion of gradience in reality to the similarity
conditions of metaphor and analogy, as for example when he contrasted two metaphorical

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assertions of his own making, the one presenting a "real but slight resemblance," and the other, a "great analogy" (W 1: 497; see
chapter 2 for detailed discussion of the "great analogy").
Without making any more detailed claims than these as to what Peirce's view might have been, I wish to present my own
taxonomy of possibility in order to illustrate how such distinctions can be made and what they might mean for a theory of
metaphor. My views have been heavily influenced by Peirce (in addition to the passages already cited, see CP 1.218, 1.487,
1.531, 2.538, 3.527, 4.573, 6.371; PW 24, 81); but I simply cannot affirm that Peirce would agree with the details of my
proposal. Furthermore, my hypothesis concerns only the general tendency among possibilities to fall into several kinds; that is, it
proposes distinctions but not disjunctions between the kinds, which I believe constitute a continuum. This continuum, however,
does seem to me to "cut itself at its own joints," so to speak. The simple scheme I have in mind is given in figure 3.3.
Kinds of Possibility
Kind Example
1. Paradoxical a square circle
2. Negative a square baseball
3. Positive a baseball
4. Irresistible a circle
Figure 3.3
It might at first seem absurd to classify a paradox such as a square circle as a "kind of possibility," since it seems, to the
ordinary conception, a clear impossibility. But "seems" is a big word. In some other dimension or possible world, a geometric
shape might very well be literally described as being both circular and square at the same instant. The very fact that we call it an
"impossibility" under ordinary conceptions of time and Euclidean space means that at least some predication of possibility is
applicable to it.
On the other hand, a square baseball, as silly as the notion may sound, is of a different order of possibility. So far as I know, no
such thing as a square baseball has ever been thought of before, let alone been produced, but we see immediately that it could
be. Someone might object that a baseball is by definition a spherical object, but I believe that without ever having mentioned the
notion to you before, I could draw a picture for which you would be unable to find a better or more precise (albeit figural)
description than "square baseball" (unless it might be "cubic baseball"; but since I invented it, I will call it "square"!). The least
that may be said of it, then, is thatunlike the square circlethe square baseball involves no contradiction with what we think is
possible; still, as we have no positive reason to expect or predict the actual existence of it, I call it a negative possibility.

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Perhaps it is a bit unfair to use an ordinary (round) baseball as an example of what I hypothesize to be the next higher order of
possibilitynamely, positive possibilitysincebaseballs are already known to exist in actuality. But imagine, if you will, a group of
ordinary people who have neither seen, heard of, nor thought of a baseball at any time in their lives. Go one step further and
suppose that they have no knowledge whatever of any sport or game involving the use of a ball. Now describe to them the game
of baseball in every detail except one: Omit any reference to the size, shape, or constitution of the ball itself. Ask them, instead,
to collaborate and to "design" some "entity" with which this game might be played. Provide them a rule book and ample
statistics from past games, supply them with a major-league baseball field to use as a laboratory, let them take all the time they
need, and give them any materials or equipment they requestexcept a baseball, of course, or any other kind of ball.
What would these people "invent"? Admittedly, it would most likely not be exactly a baseball as we know it. Most of us would
be very surprised (even if there were physicists and engineers among the group of inventors) if they came up with a ball
weighing just over five ounces, measuring between 2.86 and 2.94 inches in diameter, composed of cork, yarn, rubber, and
covered in cowhide sewn together with "216 slightly raised red cotton stitches." This loving blueprint of the current ball by
baseball essayist Roger Angell, however, suggests that he might not be surprised in the least if our "inventors" offered
something rather close to the contemporary specifications; for if the present ball "were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a
few centigrams heavier or lighter," Angell writes, ''the game of baseball would be utterly different" (Eschholz and Rosa, 1978:
46-47).
While anyone except such an articulate idealist of the sport would be surprised if the "new" ball were that close to the original, I
think most of us would be equally surprised if the new ball were as light as a ping-pong ball, or as large as a basketball, or as
soft as a bean bag, or as "square" as Rubik's cube. This is all I mean by saying that a baseball is an example of positive
possibility. Its general but essential character is motivated.
Perhaps I have unfairly loaded the scenario by giving my group of "inventors" the rules of the game in advance. Imagine
instead, then, a future world like our own with one exception: All knowledge or memory of the game of baseball has been
erased, perhaps through systematic suppression by some alien power. Perhaps even cricket and any other game like baseball
have been utterly forgotten and expunged from recorded history. Go a step further and imagine that all sports and contests of
any kind involving the use of a ball have been strictly suppressed for centuries (by unwritten law so as to avoid even a reference
to such things) and that this "re-programming" of humanity has been so successful that no member of the species for several
generations has had to

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be "isolated under suspicion of playing ball" with any object whatsoever (not even with a rock or tin can).
Under this scenario, is there any reason to predict that human beings, once given their freedom again, would "re-invent" any
games involving the use of some sort of ball? Probably so, I think. But if they did, would any of these games resemble the
current game of baseball in any remarkable way? Perhaps so, perhaps not. If a similar game did evolve, would it make use of an
object that might provoke anyone from our century to exclaim, "Why, that thing they are tossing around is essentially a
baseball!' Surely this would be far too much for even the most radical baseball idealist to hope for. The baseball in current use is
only one version of a possibility. Given human nature and the laws of physics, a baseball fills this niche in actuality rather neatly
(at least more positively than my "square'' version would). For all that, there is nothing "irresistible" about it (with apologies to
Roger Angell).
Apply the above scenario to the idea of a circle, however, and perhaps you will see why I use it as an example of the highest
order of possibility. Any "alien power" which wished to eradicate all tokens of the circle from our world would naturally have a
much harder time of it. How might this be accomplished? Not only baseballs and all other balls, but all geometry books and
others showing circles would have to be burnt. All art and architecture and mechanical devices exhibiting shapes close to
circular would have to be destroyed. People would have to be prevented somehow from observing natural shapes like the moon
or water droplets or concentric ripples in a pond. Genetic engineering would even have to be performed on the species to
suppress undesirable anatomical traits suggesting roundness or curvature (like the iris of the eye).
Even supposing all this could actually be achieved, and a new generation of people arose who had neither seen a reasonably
good example of a circle nor heard the concept discussed, would it then surprise you if some youngster, doodling on a paper,
were to draw a rough circle, stop to reflect upon the shape of it, replicate the doodle again and again with improving results, and
then run to show the work to a parent? I suspect that youngster would do so with all the excitement of a Kepler having just
hypothesized the elliptical orbit of Mars. Even supposing that the child's discovery were suppressed, would it surprise you if it
were to happen again with a different child or adult? I would rather be surprised if this, or something like it, failed to happen.
That is what I mean by an irresistible possibility.
How would this hypothesis on the nature of possibility apply to metaphor? Keeping in mind that the hypothesis intends only to
emphasize major loci in a graded continuum of possibility, my claim is that poetic metaphors present an immediately anomalous
character like that suggested by possibility kinds 1 and 2 (paradoxical and negative), but that the metaphors then open up, or
turn

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around, to reveal, within these anomalies, a set of previously hidden but very potent, sometimes irresistible connections which
are possibilities of kinds 3 and 4. While as possibilities these poetic similarities are vague, they possess a peculiar capability (in
the case of kind 3) or near inevitability (in the case of kind 4) for being actualizedas I would say, "discovered"in poetic
metaphor.
The words of Peirce, however, best describe what it is I wish to say about this sort of "poetic" idea. In speaking of the evolution
of a real idea, Peirce wrote: "the idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea. The soul does for the
idea just what the cellulose does for the beauty of the rose; that is to say, it affords it opportunity" (CP 1.216).
But here an important qualification on my use of the term "poetic" suggests itself: In order for a metaphor to be merely effective,
it is not at all necessary that it yield this powerful sense I am trying to describe of an idea in possession of a soul. On the
contrary, a metaphor may be "effective" in giving nothing more than the character of the speaker's soul in possession of some
idea. Good metaphors whose primary focus is on the idea-possessing soul, I call "dramatic or expressive"; only those are
"poetic," in my use of the term, whose primary focus falls rather upon an idea (motivated thought or feeling) so compelling that
it subordinates the poet's (and the reader's) idiosyncrasies of mind and character to itself. To a certain extent, this usage of the
term ''poetic" is arbitrary, since either kind of metaphor may be used to great advantage in poetry, but I wish to distinguish
sharply between the dramatic uses of metaphor (serving a purpose in specific context) and what I see as poetic metaphor's real
epistemic, even prophetic power (significance in but beyond specific context).
For instance, consider the metaphor "The Mona Lisa is a wart!" (borrowed from Earl Mac Cormac's illuminating chapter on
"Metaphor and Truth," 1985: 220). It seems to me that this metaphor might be rhetorically effective. It expresses the speaker's
state of mind rather well; in fact, in a dramatic or literary context, it would intrigue me to know what sort of character
(outspoken critic? bitter artist? demented cynic?) might invent such a trope. But does the metaphor furnish us with any
significance which we may carry with us beyond such an immediate context? If we allow that the wart acts like a "filter," does it
"organize" our view of anything we look at through itthe Mona Lisa, for instanceor does the filter merely succeed in making a
dramatic spectacle of itself, thereby organizing our view of its designer? Granting that the latter effect may indeed be the actual
rhetorical purpose of the trope, the question still remains why it would be so hard-pressed to achieve the former purpose. The
answer seems inescapable: No "interactive magic' occurs here because the possibility of any salient (positive or irresistible)
similarity between the Mona Lisa and a wart is too far-fetched, given our present conceptions, to be seriously entertained. There
is of course a possibility of a substantive resemblance, to which

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we may be blinded by our admiration of the painting or by our unreasonable prejudice against warts, but this is only a "negative"
possibility (kind 2), one which we admit as a possibility only because we wish to remain open to some future revelation. In the
meantime, however, there is no such revelation here; if the metaphor is memorable at all, we will probably remember it only as
having come from a particular source or dramatic context.
Two final examples may serve. First, suppose we are confronted with the anomaly (and, perhaps, metaphor), "The number 19 is
an elephant" (from a suggestion of Paul Henle, 1958). In all likelihood, we could make no sense of it-out of context.
However, suppose we give it a context. Suppose I tell you that something like it comes from a poem by my niece. She has just
learned to count as high as twenty but has not yet realized that this qualifies her to keep on counting practically forever. Still,
being the bright young lady that she is, she has written a "poem" on numbers to celebrate her having reached the pinnacle of
twenty. The poem begins:
1 is fun
2 is too
3 is the key
4 is the door
and proceeds in like fashion to the penultimate and final lines:
19 is elephantine
And 20 is aplenty!
We can find much to praise in this "poem" (Peirce, I think, would especially like the third line). The metaphor of 19 and the
elephant, now in context, is completely intelligible. Knowing as we do that the author of the poem is a young child who has just
mastered her numbers up to twenty, we guess what she has in mind: 19, as numbers go, is huge like an elephant (as animals go).
Beyond the intelligibility of the comparison, it is also quite clever for a child. It is graphically expressive of her thought, and
(especially in view of the rhythmical and rhetorical "setup" it provides for the following and final line) it is an effective stylistic
ornament. There is a spark of metaphorical and poetical sensibility and creativity that any caring adult would want to nurture in
this child. In fact, considering only the power of metaphor to express thought vividly and attractively (to open a window into the
speaker's mind and supply "window dressing" in the same instant, we might say), this child's metaphor is as fine a figure as any
to be found in poetry.
Is it, then, for all that, what we really mean by "poetry" and genuinely "poetic" metaphor?
Perhaps we should consider this question in the same context already

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described. In that context, how should we respond to this poem? What response from adults would be considered "cooperative"
and satisfying to the child? Most likely (along with some sincere praise and some encouragement to keep trying), a little
laughter. Even the child would intuit, I think, that this metaphor ought not be taken too seriously. As adults, we certainly ought
to recognize it as child's play; it is playing with language, as indeed mature poets do, but to significantly different effects. This
metaphor is memorable, if at all, only because of its context (not just the context of the poem, but the context of the child);
while poetic metaphor is also richly integrated with its own context, its memorability is not limited to such, in part because of its
iconic power to reveal otherwise hidden truths about its object, not just about its subject (creator).
My notion of poetic metaphor does not preclude the possibility that the object of a poetic icon may be in the subject (creator or
reader); but if the object of a metaphor is in the subject, one further question I wish to ask is whether the object is only in the
subject. Consider, for instance, this poem by Emily Dickinson (1896):
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
Some third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Here, as I read it, Dickinson's "So huge, so hopeless to conceive" is iconic ("huge" = conceptually overwhelming) of the object
Death. More precisely, the metaphor depicts her feeling about two "events" of death (the deaths of her two most dearly loved
ones). This feeling must have been deep in her soul. But it was not only in her soul; it is in ours, too, if we truly understand it,
and not because we must condescend to imagine what it felt like for her. Rather, I think it is because we know that our souls, no
less than hers, are in it, for "it" is universal. Although the metaphor is indexically mild, its iconic power is grounded in a
persistent metaiconic possibility which is something like spatial magnitude ¬ sublimity (more at chapter 6).
Now it is interesting to speculate that my niece's 19-elephantine metaphor may be an early intuitive attempt at the same or a
similar metaicon. In fact, considered in that connection as an abductive hypothesis about her numbers, it presents quite a feasible
metaphorical diagram of her thought and feeling:
19 / numbers :: elephant / animals
The 'feasibility" of a diagram as hypothesis does not depend on the external

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"truth" of the object (here the object would be the hugeness of 19, which we know is not externally true as numbers go); rather,
it serves its purpose as a hypothesis by iconizing an idea in a logical form which may be considered further ("tested," if you
will). In this case, however, we can predict that the hypothesis will not be confirmed by the further testingat least not as a true
analogical form of the metaiconic type magnitude ¬ sublimity, simply because my niece will soon reject the object 19 / numbers
as a good example of magnitude or sublimity. The elephant-icon crystallizes a real connection to an object in the child's mind;
but that objectthe hugeness of 19is only in her mind (except as we "condescend" to imagine what it feels like to her). Her
metaphorical analogy is thus complete and sufficient in itself as a clear but two-part diagram of what it might be like for any
child to learn numbers up to 20. Given the narrow context of the child's experience, the metaphor must be said to embody
something of a "positive" possibility, but the idiosyncrasy of the context militates against granting it even that much. There is
certainly nothing "irresistible'' about it, nothing like a grounding in that "third Firstness" of a metaiconic typology towards
which poetic metaphors (even those which we cannot at the present call more than "positive") characteristically tend to
gravitate. In other words, my niece's idea is not one which, by itself, is "destined to be conserved" (CB 776: 601)except as a
record of her childhood (and that is valuable enough). The child's "soul" is certainly in possession of this idea, but I think we
can safely predict that she will outgrow it; it is simply not a large enough idea to possess her.
Let us hope, however, that the child does not in the process outgrow the gift of metaphor, for the elephant-icon has served an
important role in helping her to crystallize her own feeling about numbers and magnitude, thereby paving the way for the
progress of her ideas towards greater maturity and the goal of metaphoric truth.
Because that goal is vague and ideal, the question of what is truemetaphorically or otherwisemust always be given only a
provisional answer. Perhaps what now seems to us the most self-evident and irresistible belief (that Death is too huge to
conceive, for instance) may someday be proved as childish as thinking that the number 19 is just one number less than as high
as we will ever count. Further, there is a very real and important sense in which it is the function of metaphor, especially of
poetic metaphor, to pose the question of what is true, to ask it in a new way, rather than to answer it in any absolute or final
way.
Still, the terms of that question, as poetic metaphor puts it to us, are full of real possibility worthy of a lifetime of deepening
consideration. The discovery of this possibility is thus not the whole conclusion of the matter, as we will see; it is only the
premise of poetic metaphor, the allowing condition of salient

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similarity upon which the figural argument proceeds with confidence into totally new configurations of meaning. The source of
that confidence is the Firstness, the manifest reality, of poetic metaphor's ground in a precedent possibility. We may be in error
for believing that this ground is real; but we cannot proceed without believing it. We may disagree about which metaphors
express the truth, but that is part of the reason we will disagree about which ones are "poetic."
The examples of poetic metaphor discussed so far, with the exception of one, are based on iconic possibilities of kind 3, I
believe: positive possibility. The one exception (the blood-wine metaphor) is grounded upon the more powerful kind 4,
irresistible possibility. The further distinction between these two types, with special emphasis upon the latter, is the focus of
chapter 4.

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IV.
FOCUS INTERPRETATION
PEIRCEAN HYPOICONS IN POETRY
At the level of Firstness, Peirce found possibilitiesin a kind of miniature preconfiguration of the entire semeioticwhich fit the
development of metaphorical Secondness and Thirdness. There is a first, second, and third kind of iconicity in possibility,
distinguishing the imaginal, analogical, and metaiconic metaphors discussed in chapter 2.
I have argued in chapter 3 that poetic metaphorical similarity is grounded at least in positive possibility (kind 3, figure 3.3) and
suggested that metaiconic similarity, as a metaphoric typology, is grounded in "irresistible" possibility (kind 4). I believe this
describes metaphor in the epitome, as it comes into existencethe archetypal metaphor. Poetic tropes in which a metaicon is fully
actualized go far beyond the level of metaphoricity achieved in metaphorical diagrams and images, and yet metaicons invariably
contain diagrams and images. Indeed, the most powerful and successful poetic diagrams and images are spun from the
overarching figural congruence of some metaicon. This chapter will further pursue the distinctions and hierarchical relations
among the three kinds of metaphorical iconicity and explore some of their possible applications in poetry, concluding with a
detailed application to a sonnet by Shakespeare.
First, consider again the Keats metaphor discussed in chapter 3: "[the stars are] diamonds trembling through and through." The
initial similarity between stars and diamonds is a clear example of the Peircean image in metaphor. The twinkling of stars and
the glittering of diamonds are sensuously (optically) alike: They both have a sparkling quality. We may elaborate this quality if
we choose, expanding the image into a diagram (stars / twinkle :: diamonds / glitter), but the elaboration merely explicates, in
"slow motion," as it were, our immediate apprehension of the linksparkling or the like. If it were not for the immediacy of this
simple sensory link between stars and diamonds, we would have great difficulty understanding that Keats is in fact talking about
stars (which are never explicitly named in the passage).
However, there is no immediate or primary sensory linkage between the spar-

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kling of the star-diamonds and the second icon, trembling. Though we may unconsciously experience the similarity as a unity,
we cannot make explicit sense of it at the sensory level alone, for the connection is rather more abstract than the first. To make
explicit sense of it (for purposes of analytical scrutiny), we need something like an analogical frame:
sparkling / light :: trembling / motion
Now if we require that all poetic metaphor consist of simple sensory likeness of some kind in order to be "clear," this second
part of Keats's metaphor would probably fail for us. At the least, we would have to express a preference for the first parallel
between stars and diamonds, which is certainly "clearer" from a strictly sensuous point of view. Yet it seems to me that
sparkling-trembling is far more interesting than the star-diamond trope, and that not just because stardiamond is (now) a
moribund metaphor. Rather, it is partly because stardiamond requires of us only a low-level sensory linkage, whereas sparkling-
trembling drives us to conceive (at least unconsciously) of an analogical similarity quotient that transcends the mere sensations
of diversity and captures (diagrammatically) the design features of energy in frozen motion ( ~ ). Keats's diagram is as clear as
any linguistic actualization of such a phenomenon can be; it is as lucid and accurate at its own level of abstraction as the much
simpler image is at its level.
On the other hand, part of what makes the sparkling-trembling diagram clear is the star-diamond image embedded within it.
After all, it is the initial stardiamond trope which first picks outactivates, or elevates to consciousness, as it werethe quality of
sparkling or the like; without this quality in mind (as argued in chapter 3), there is no reliable ground for reconstructing the
analogical extension by which "trembling through and through" is brought into the metaphorical complex. Thus the image and
the diagram often work together in poetic metaphor, the image set succinctly within the larger diagram, lending concreteness
and sensory immediacy to the diagram, just as the diagram contributes (ana)logical richness and breadth to the image. Given
Peirce's distinction between images and diagrams, then, we see how poetic metaphor often appeals to many levels of the mind
simultaneously.
Examples of this complementary interplay between the first Firstness of the image and the second Firstness of the diagram are
found everywhere in poetry; consider another example. Shakespeare's Othello, requested by the Venetian Senators to delay his
nuptials with Desdemona in order to undertake the Turkish war, responds:
The tyrant custom, most grave Senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war

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My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity
I find in hardness, and do undertake
These present wars against the Ottomites.
(Othello I, iii, 226-231)
Othello's "flinty and steel couch of war,' though only part of a larger metaphorical complex, is itself a metaphorical complexan
image embedded inside a diagram. The image is "flinty and steel couch," and the diagram is "couch of war." Thus the two
tropes are interlocked at couch, which at once signifies the object of the image and the icon of the diagram. Let us examine this
reading in more detail.
Though it is of course possible to have a couch which is literally made of flint and steel, I take "flinty and steel couch" as a
metaphorical image because I think Othello is speaking figuratively of a couch whichinitially, at leastis intended to "feel hard"
and to strike the immediate sense as uncomfortable. The subsequent lines lend support to this preliminary reading, both by the
explicit mention of "hardness" (line 230) and by the oxymoronic contrast to "bed of down" (line 228). Though ''flinty and steel
couch" is a novel poetic image, it requires only slightly more mental effort to interpret, if any more at all, than the now
moribund "iron fist"; both figures present a rather immediate imaginal connection, on grounds of a tactile quality (hardness or
the like), from the icons (iron, flint, steel) to their respective objects. In the case of Shakespeare's metaphor, the imaginal icon of
flint and steel may also trigger additional associations of sparks and fire which contribute to the general sensory impression of
discomfort in the object couch.
So constituted (hypostatically, as per chapter 3) as a "hardness" and "fieriness," this couch-object becomes, in turn, a very fitting
icon for the next object, war. Note, however, that there is no direct or immediate sensory justification for the comparison of war
to any kind of a couch, a couch being a concrete object and war being a rather abstract phenomenon. The logic of this
comparison therefore emerges only as an analogical proportion like the following:
flint-steel couch / other couches :: war / other occupations
Thus, the metaphorical image of a "flinty and steel couch" lends sensory immediacy and concreteness to the otherwise very
abstract metaphorical diagram, "couch of war." In return, the proportionality of the diagram increases the precision of the image
and contributes analogical richness to it, for flint and steel not only seem hard and uncomfortable as couch material, but they
also fit doubly well into the use of this couch as a diagrammatic icon for war, with the "hardness" of the couch having an
analogue in the more abstract "hardship" of

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war, and with the "fiery" associations of flint and steel from the couch having a special application to the gunpowder and
weaponry used in war.
Nor does this exhaust the functional complexity of the whole metaphor. After the (fiery) hardness of flint and steel has been
hypostatically constituted in the couch, and after the couch in turn has been diagrammatically reconstituted as an analogue to
war, then the entire construct ("the flinty and steel couch of war") itself becomes the hypostatic object of one final icon,
Othello's "thricedriven bed of down" (line 228). This final figure functions at both levels already established, thereby reinforcing
the interplay: The word bed underlines the diagrammatic (ana)logic by which ''war" is constituted as a couch, and the word
down intensifies (by oxymoronic contrast) the sense of hardness and discomfort that arises from the image of flint and steel. The
cumulative effect is that of a paradox, which of course is exactly what Shakespeare not only wants Othello to express but wants
to express about Othelloan enigma of the hero's character which is at the heart of the play: "A natural and prompt alacrity/ I find
in hardness" (lines 229-230). While "poetic" (as a commentary on war) beyond its context, then, the metaphor also achieves a
rich "dramatic" effect as a revelation of its speaker's personality and its relevance to the play's catastrophe. That is, Othello's
"alacrity" in the fiery hardness of war is perhaps part of what makes him ill-suited to the softness and leisure of Desdemona's
marriage bed.
Figure 4.1 illustrates the embedding of hypostatic results from one metaphor inside the predication of another, as the complexity
of successive metaphorical diagrams is built up vertically around the horizontal polarity of opposed but parallel metaphorical
imagery (flint-steel vs. down). To see how this "building up" takes place, read figure 4.1 from the bottom to the top.
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.1

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As we will see at the end of this chapter in an extended example, this embedding of trope within trope within trope is rather
typical of Shakespeare, and Peirce's distinction between the hypoiconic image and diagram calls keen attention to the variety of
levels on which complex metaphor functions. Further, the interplay of hierarchically nested metaphors in poetry is even more
significant if Peirce's provisions for yet a third level of iconicity are taken into account.
As I have argued in chapter 2, that third level of metaphoricity proper is the metaicon. Consider, as an example of this sort of
archetypal metaphor, the sort of "master trope" out of which a seemingly endless series of fresh metaphors is continually spun in
the language, especially in poetry. The example I have in mind is:
Cycle of Seasons == Cycle of Life
spring youth
summer maturity
autumn old age
winter death
This well-known metaphorical archetype would seem to fit my reading of Peirce's hypoiconic "metaphor" as metaicon rather
well. Someone may object that it is a "dead" metaphor; I doubt it, but even if it is, I would add that its "decay" yields fertile
ground for poets. Shakespeare used it in his Sonnet 73, "That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold" (extended discussion at
the end of this chapter), and he was not the first to do so. Later, Thomas Hardy employed a "winter day'' as the controlling
metaphor for the death of love in his poem "Neutral Tones." Such modern poets as e.e. cummingshardly a purveyor of dead
metaphorhave used it, as in his "anyone lived in a pretty how town," where the cycle of seasons is a tacit metaphor for the
monotonous circularity of life in "how town." Archibald MacLeish (in "Ars Poetica") offered a "maple leaf" (which, in
conjunction with an "empty doorway," is a striking though subliminal icon of the fall) as a figure for "the whole history of
human grief."
This is archetypal metaphor not merely because it is a recurrent figure in many poems but because there is a reason for its
recurrence. The reason, in Peirce's terms, is law (here serving as an iconic type). While law of course would include mere
conventions (literary conventions, in this case, which make the metaphor a fully resonant symbol), Peirce's notion of law is not
limited to arbitrary convention (see CP 2.307). Indeed, what I have in mind as the "third Firstness" of law in possibility (the
ground of the metaicon) is an antecedent final cause which motivates the literary convention enveloping the metaphorical
archetype. Thus, the reason for the recurrence of the "seasons-life" metaphor in poetry is no mere accident of literary tradition.
That is, I think it is not the case that some prominent poet just happened to invent it, whereupon it became

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popular and fashionable among poets. No, that explanation would negate the metaphor's perennial fertility. Rather, the reason for
its fertility is simply that both the seasons and the life cycle obey the same general law of change and perpetuity, the endless
circle of germination, growth, flowering, seeding, withering, death, and decay, whence comes new germination. The parallel of
all forms of life to the seasons is an inexhaustible source of fresh metaphor because the law in which the parallel turns is
universal, teleological, and eternal.
It might be objected that any "dead" or "decayed" or "conventionalized" metaphor, even an image or a diagram, can be
resurrected by a clever poet. This is true, but in the case of most metaphors, the resurrection is typically brought on through
something like a twist or pun, as Shapiro and Shapiro show (1976: 20-21). There is no such cuteness in Shakespeare's Sonnet
73, nor even in cummings's ''anyone lived in a pretty how town." Shakespeare, Hardy, and MacLeish also (in the poems noted
above) freshen the seasonal metaphor by recasting it in novel contexts and by developing within it new images and diagrams,
but it is still basically the same metaphor; its universality suggests novel contexts and implies new images and diagrams. Even
when nothing in particular is done to embellish itas in Shelley's, "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" ("Ode to the West
Wind")it resonates with echoes, not just of a long literary tradition, but of a universal and irresistible congruence.
Such a metaphor goes beyond images and diagrams, though countless such tropes may be cultivated from it without exhausting
it. This is not to diminish the significant role of the image and diagram; on the contrary, the typological generality of the
metaicon needs just the logic and energy of the diagram, and just the concrete and immediate sensory particularity of the image,
in order for its full potential to be actualized in poetry. But we must be aware of this potential in the metaicon itself. It is of the
nature of law, the governing and creative principle of perennial evolution. At the level of third Firstness, it is the seed of a poetic
law; it must germinate (given the hospitable soil of a poetic culture), and once it does, it must grow as a powerfully creative
symbol. Thus I am thinking of the metaicon as an antecedent but "determinate possibility" (among more "general possibilities")
in the creativity and growth of the poetic/symbolic archetype, much as Peirce described what "was the purpose" of all creation
before the "influx of a symbol":
A chaos of reactions utterly without any approach to law is absolutely nothing; and therefore pure nothing was such a
chaos. Then pure indeterminacy having developed determinate possibilities, creation consisted in mediating between the
lawless reactions and the general possibilities by the influx of a symbol. This symbol was the purpose of creation. Its
object was the entelechy of being which is the ultimate representation. (NEM 4.262)
Unlike the metaphorical image, which (by itself) is only a salient likeness, or

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the metaphorical diagram, which (alone) is a significant proportion, the metaicon is an irresistible congruence that asks to be
discovered and cannot but evolve into something richer and richer the more often it is re-discovered in poetry. Poets capture
novel images and diagrams; but they do not capture the metaicon so much as they are captured by it. Such thoughts are not in
us; we are in them, as Peirce would have it (CP 5.289 n. 1).
My intention here is not to make the metaicon sound like some sort of mystical poetic nirvana. On the contrary, I wish simply to
point out that the metaicon has a natural and rational lawfulness, albeit a vague one (as possibility, and on the second sense of
"vagueness" discussed in chapter 2). Its "vagueness" is its universal and powerful generality; its "naturalness'' and
"reasonableness" are displayed, I believe, in its symmetry. These attributes make it seem fitting to think of the actualized
metaicon as instantiating a general "algebra" of poetic metaphor. Some readers may not like this suggestion, because they dislike
the association of "logic" with language, and especially with creative literature. Nevertheless, my intent is to show that the laws
of metaiconic logic create imaginative possibilities for poetry. As Peirce said, "A 'rule' in algebra differs from most other rules,
in that it requires nothing to be done, but only permits us to make certain transformations" (MS 573: 2).
For instance, consider further the near-algebraic symmetry of the metaicon. Because of their symmetry ( = ), algebraic formulae
are reversible; if I am correct that the metaicon is based upon a congruence (¬) which approaches such an equation, we also
might expect to find that poetic archetypal metaphors are rather freely reversible. And in fact, they are. For instance, in the
"seasons-life" archetype, the seasons may stand as the icon to signify the object of someone's age or time of life, but time of life
or age can also become an icon to signify an object in the seasons (figure 4.2).
Icon Object
"the autumn of life"
the autumn [old age]
(season) (time of life)
"the adolescence of the year"
adolescence [late spring]
(time of life) (season)
Figure 4.2
Similarly, in the "wine-blood" metaphor, another perennial archetype which I believe has metaiconic status, we can have Bink
Noll's "last Bordeaux" for (dying) blood (Gordon 1973: 82-83, discussed in chapter 3), or we can have "the blood of the grape"
for wine. Such metaphors are reversible, I believe, be-

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cause their parallelism originally obtained, not just from themselves, but from a third element, a third Firstness, a seed of the
symbolic embryo (though in these cases the "embryo" has already been born and has grown to great semantic stature in our
literature); it is this which makes their parallelism teleological. Of course the symmetrical nature of these and similar parallels is
"aided by convention," as Peirce said of the algebraic icon (CP 2.279), butunlike other "conventionalized'' metaphorsthey remain
perennially fresh. Part of their freshness seems to obtain from fresh images and diagrams which poets are always developing
within the overarching metaicons, but the way in which metaicons naturally lend themselves to such development is itself a
function of their teleological symmetry: They are forever evolving because they revolve upon a pivot of law.
In any case, it is interesting to note that images (when they appear by themselves, outside the symmetrical matrix of a
controlling metaicon) are, in general, not freely reversible. Some few images such as "stars-diamonds" are reversible after they
are thoroughly lexicalized and moribund (for example, the Star of India), although this seems more of a "collapse" than a
reverse, and even then imaginal metaphors tend to follow the general diachronic laws of unidirectional sense transfer (see
Williams 1975: 207-211). These (apparent) facts have already been discussed in chapter 2 with respect to conversational
metaphors of the imaginal and analogical kind.
Similarly, the poetic metaphorical diagram also seems irreversible. True, explicit verbal analogies are reversible. However,
poetic metaphor of the analogical sort is an implicit analogy. The poet's actual presentation of the analogy is characterized by an
asymmetrical deletion of elements from the analogical frame, making it irreversible in most cases without change of sense or the
explicit addition of terms (turning it into a simile). Moreover, poetic analogies typically predicate proportionality (::) across
radically different semantic domains (more at chapter 5), making them even more asymmetrical. Most often, the direction of
predication is from concrete tangible icon to abstract intangible object. This asymmetry makes reversing the direction of
predication practically impossible, even if it were desirable.
Consider a diagrammatic metaphor discussed by Paul Henle (1958), John Keats's metaphor of "the soul enwrapped in gloom."
As Henle shows, the metaphor is a diagram; but the analogical frame is characterized by an asymmetrical deletion of elements:
gloom / soul :: -wrap
/_______
(object) (icon)
Because the object is fully explicit and because we have a morphemic fragment of the icon (-wrap), we can readily complete the
frame with something like:

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(wrap)
gloom / soul :: [blanket or cloak] / [body]
Of course the icon need not be specified precisely as a blanket or cloak covering a body; any provisional or crude icon will do,
as long as it involves some concrete "wrap" around some concrete object. The metaphor makes the rather abstract "soul in
gloom" situation more vivid and tangible for us precisely by offering a concrete iconic model of it.
But suppose we try to reverse the icon and object roles in this metaphor. That is, suppose a body wrapped in a blanketinstead of
being a subliminal, provisional iconhad been Keats's precise (but implicit) object. And suppose, in order to indicate this precise
object, he had to use only "the soul in gloom" as an icon. It is difficult to see how he might use such an abstract, intangible thing
for a 'model"even though all terms of it are explicitto make us imagine, precisely, a body wrapped in a blanket or cloak. Abstract
and immaterial phenomena like the soul in gloom do not serve well as icons, even with all terms explicit, to signify concrete
objects like a body in a wrap. Conversely, concrete icons, even if they are implicit and fragmentary like "-wrap / [ ],'' serve very
well to signify abstract or insubstantial objects. Apparently, then, implicit concrete icons are readily reconstructible from explicit
abstract objects in poetic metaphor of the diagrammatic sort, with only a modicum of contextual cueing. But the reverse is not
true. Unnamed concrete objects cannot be reliably reconstructed from abstract or intangible icons, not even from fully explicit
ones, and no matter how elaborate the contextual design. Therefore, unlike the metaicon, the poetic diagram is not generally
reversible or reciprocal (unless, as we will see, it is generated from and enveloped by the symmetrical matrix of a controlling
metaicon).
This constraint on diagrams seems to accord with some general diachronic laws of linguistic change. As Bloomfield has put it
(1933: 429-430), "The surface study of semantic change indicates that refined and abstract meanings grow out of more concrete
meanings." Bloomfield is correct to call this a conclusion from "surface study" only, for as we will observe in chapter 7,
semantic growth via the metaicon, in factis in exactly the reverse order, namely from abstract to concrete. Nevertheless, prior to
the entelechy of a metaiconic system in the language (the elaboration of which system, I believe, is often one of the principal
debts owed by a language to its creative literature), then semantic growth must be according to Bloomfield's "surface" law: from
concrete to abstract, or as I would say, from concrete iconic image, towards abstract metaicon, via diagrammatic or analogical
extension. Needless to say, such growth from concrete to abstract could not occur except for the fact that the image, and
especially the diagram, represent asymmetrical "leaps upward." In the case of poetic images and diagrams, these are often
"quantum leaps"a condition of exaggerated

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asymmetry, making the images and diagrams even more non-reciprocal and irreversible.
When such leaps attain a genuinely metaiconic level, however, they represent connections which approach an ultimate condition
of pure symmetry between icon and object (thus icon-icon), like two mirrors turned to face one another, as it were, with the
consequent infinite proliferation of self-reflexive figures at the interface. Thus the metaicon is (nearly) reversible to the full
"algebraic" extent, whereby it suggests an unending plenitude of fresh images and diagrams. As will be discussed further in
chapter 7, actualized metaicons are thus the vehicles of a prolific and accelerated form of growthnot only in literature, but in
language, culture, and cognition.
What is more important in this predominantly synchronic study of metaphor, however, is that the symmetrical congruence of the
metaicon is what lends both elements of the archetypal poetic metaphor an immediate sense of permanently growing
significance. A successful realization of the blood-wine metaicon, for instance, brings us to see both blood and wine in a new
way, with a new value and meaning. (The Roman Catholic doctrine of wine-blood-or of breadfleshtransubstantiation ought not
really be surprising or shocking, even to the most ardent disbeliever, in view of the power of such metaicons.) Similarly, in a
poem like Shakespeare's "That Time of Year . .. ," as we will see presently, the "life-seasons" metaicon is not merely a
mechanism for naming the intangibles of old age, but a reciprocal relation that encourages us to think about the cyclical nature
of time, whereby we come to view both the human life cycle and the seasons in a poignantly new way, to discover something of
that order which unites man and the cosmos. Whereas novel images and diagrams are powerful expressions of the poet's world
view, metaicons control, shape, and reshape the world view. Rooted in the potentiality of law, they grow, reciprocally.
In poetry, novel images and diagrams also sometimes foster such new perceptions, rather than simply naming their objects; but
the growth of new meaning they evoke is usually very transitory, a provisional expansion only within the special world of the
poem. I believe this is partly due to the fact that images and diagrams are not freely reversible (by themselves). Indeed, one of
the best ways to illustrate just how powerful a provision this reversibility is in the metaicon is to show how inappropriately
distorted it renders a poem based mainly on simple poetic images. For instance, in the first line of Eliot's "Sweeney among the
Nightingales" (1962: 35), we read "Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees ... ." The image captures the optical condition precisely.
We see the apish "squatting'' of Sweeneywith the "apeneck" jutting of the head forwardand that is all, I think. The animal
imagery, a whole series of brilliant surrealistic metaphors creating a pervasive sense of depravity in the world of the poem, is
nevertheless just that: a poetic instantiation of hypoiconic imagery. It

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seems to belabor the poem a little even to expand this imagery into a diagram like
Sweeney / other bar patrons :: ape / lower species
since nothing that elaborate is worked out in the poem (though it may indeed be suggested). Even if the poem's graphic imagery
can be usefully expanded to a diagram, no clear metaicon emerges from it, in my view. For instance, a college student of mine
probably went too far in "reversing" the metaphors, reading the traits and behavior of the humans in the poem as a running
commentary upon relations in the animal kingdom, which he saw as the real object. Eliot, the student insisted, was really
demonstrating the "universal law of Darwinian Evolution"; the human social interactions in the bar were actually an "allegory of
natural selection in biological theory." I think the student was (creatively) over-reading the poem, outdoing Eliot. He was in fact
reading its figural content as a metaicon when I think he should have been content with it as a powerful series of striking images
which depict, not all of nature, but the special world of Sweeney and his degenerate companions.
With true metaicons, the more frequent interpretive mistake is under-reading. In Shakespeare's sonnet below, for instance, the
general law of the cyclical nature of time is the principle which governs the parallelism of every metaphor employed. We ought
therefore to resist the habit of reading the metaphors in one direction only, from icon to the discovery of "object." Rather, the
icons and "objects" should be read as joint signs of one another, as reciprocal tokens of the same universal type. Shakespeare
exploits this reciprocity for its potent generality and for its generative potential: Fresh images and diagrams thus abound,
offering elaborate development and subtle variety to a single grand theme performed in four major movements-four distinct yet
interrelated metaicons.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake
against the cold, Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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The grand theme is of course the cycle of life, which begins in youth and ends in death. Shakespeare builds this theme in four
movements by drawing upon the poetic and dramatic power of four metaicons which might be generalized as follows:
life = season
life = day
death = night
life = fire
All four of these fit my reading of Peirce's "metaphor" as metaicon. All four are recurrent figures in creative literature and in the
linguistic culture because they all possess nearly universal breadth, and yet they maintain a perennial fertility, not just
encompassing but generating a myriad of particular images and diagrams. In each case, the overarching figural congruence is
very nearly symmetrical and reversible. The diagrammatic and imaginal extensions which Shakespeare builds within these
master tropes lend their controlling metaphors a sensory immediacy and a logical certitude.
Peirce's hierarchical hypoiconic structure, when applied to this poem, calls keen attention not only to the elaborate variety of
tropological instruments which Shakespeare brings into harmony, with images appealing to the immediate sense or feeling and
diagrams to the aesthetic logic of proportion, but also to Shakespeare's genius for embedding one trope inside another,
generating one from another, exactly as Peirce's diagram may subsume the image and as the metaicon subsumes them both.
Peirce's sense of isomorphic structure within structure within structure is what makes his theory especially sensitive to the
analytical interpretation of poetic metaphor, a kind of analysis which, far from doing any violence to the whole, actually
encourages a more holistic reading. The following exercise in completing Shakespeare's metaphoric diagrams, for instance, even
if my versions of these are inaccurate, may lead us to consider possibilities in the poem that we might otherwise have missed.
First, Shakespeare's opening line, "That time of year thou mayst in me behold," more than initiates the first metaicon of "life-
season" (specifically, "agedness-autumn," as we soon learn); his wording of it also reminds us that this metaicon is a
congruence, not a mere correspondence: A is not merely beside or like B, but A is actually ''in" B. (Note that Shakespeare uses
the same "A in B" predication in the first line of each of the three quatrains to announce the controlling metaphor for that
stanza.) Thus the autumn is not merely a mechanism for designating the poet's time of life, but a kind of axiomatic
truthcondition by which the typological metaphorical qualities of the icon autumn are accorded the status of a controlling first
principle. We see not two things side by side but two things in one; we see the unnamed and sublimated object,

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old age, as belonging to the same whole to which the icon of autumn belongs. Thus we are asked to view the aging process,
despite its poignant sadness and the approach of death (winter), as a thoroughly natural thing, just another sign of the cycle of
time, full of pathos but utterly devoid of tragedy. No, the poem does not gush with sentimental euphemisms (as some lesser poet
might have written: "the mellow joys and beauties of the autumnal age"); quite to the contrary, the poem's metaphors portray the
fall as a time of harsh, painful realities. But the poet does not whine about getting old either. Very subtly, he betrays a profound
acceptance of a natural and universal law, the turn of the seasons in his own life.
The subtlety of this acceptance, which nicely represses any distracting pretension to heroism or martyrdom on the poet's part,
arises from his quiet presentation of the icon autumn inside the object framethe specifics of his physical condition. Now in
ordinary metaphors, the usual configuration is to place a aprovisional" icon alongside the "true" object; this may lead or allow
the interpreter to focus on the object itself in the pursuit of the "truth." Shakespeare, however, exploits the unique symmetry of
the metaicon to reverse (or to negate) this polarity, bringing the icon of autumn into primary position as an object in itself, thus
implying that we can only understand old age (the anticipated object) by first understanding autumn as a true instance of the
aging process.
This reversal colors the truth, but it does not soften it; the diagrams in the rest of stanza one squelch any suspicion that the
autumn-icon is meant to glorify or sentimentalize old age. In three successive lines we have three diagrams:
few leaves / boughs :: [few hairs?] / [limbs of body?]
bare boughs / [tree] :: ruined choir / [church]
departed birds / bare boughs :: departed singers / ruined choir
The sublimated objects of the second and third frames above suggest two further extensions:
ruined choir / [church] :: [broken voice?] / [body?]
lost singers / ruined choir :: [lost lyricism?] / [broken voice?]
Perhaps some of these extensions go too far. There are for me, however, at least some faint hints of Shakespeare's fear that the
muses which once "sang sweetly" in himself (who was merely their habitation) may now have forsaken him in his old age. In
any case, whatever we take the prerogatives to be for constructing the implicit objects of Shakespeare's extended and
interlocking diagrammatic icons, the salient point is that these implicit objects (the poet's conditions of life and limb) are rather
deliberately sublimated by the fronted elaborateness of the iconic structure. While the icons are all harsh and painful, avoiding
any temptation to meliorate the speaker's condition, the sublimation of that condition again calls attention to the fact that the
Law of the Seasons,

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and not the poet's private complaint, is the interpretive key. Shakespeare's patron/addressee would no doubt already have known
the details of the poet's condition. The poem serves the addressee's needs (as well as our own) by reinterpreting the pains of
growing old not merely as a parallel to the autumn but (because of the reversed metaicon, containing diagrams whose objects
are left implicit) as an actual single instantiation of autumnal changes. When the human condition is subordinated in this way to
the condition of time and season, we come to see the human condition in a totally new light; and that new "light" itself (the
season itself) begins to take on a growing significance, offeringif not comfortat least an acceptance of things at last correctly
understood. Such an understanding is necessarily metaiconic.
Images in the first stanza contribute a varied harmony to this theme. The fading or whiting of the speaker's hair is perhaps
imagined as "yellow leaves." Those for whom visual precision is the be-all and end-all of poetic metaphor will not like this; they
will reject the image as fanciful, or the suggestion that it is an image of fading hair, because they want an image to show them
what they already know the object looks likein this case, probably white or gray. Perhaps the image, despite its sensory appeal,
does border on the analogical. But the important point (as I have argued in chapter 2) is that there is a continuum of iconicity
from the imaginal up through the analogical to the metaiconic. Because the metaicon which controls the yellow-leaves-to-
faded-hair connection has already been clearly established in the poem, "yellow leaves" possesses a truthfulness and accuracy
transcending mere visual precision. That is, we should remember that hair turns white or gray (and sometimes yellowish) in
older people for basically the same reason that the leaves of a tree turn color in the fall. Shakespeare's purpose is not just to
have us guess that "yellow leaves" implies "faded hair"; he wants us to see faded hair in shades of autumn, and to see shades of
autumn in faded hairthat is, to truly understand the universal aging processes of nature.
Is the "shaking" of the "boughs" against the "cold" a triple image of an old man's clammy, palsied limbs? I think so, but the
question almost misses the point. In view of the controlling metaicon, it would be better to say that the chilling loss of
circulation and the loss of muscular control in the limbs of an older person really are, in the global scheme of things, of little
more private significance than the shaking of a barren tree in the chilly wind. It is not a pretty picture, but it is true. The truth of
such an image is not the explicitness of the object, but the implicit universality in terms of which the image (embedded in its
metaicon) re-interprets the object.
By way of contrast, I recall the cry of Shakespeare's aged King Lear, tearing off his clothes in the storm because he has at last
come to know that 'unaccommodated man" is only a 'poor, bare, fork'd animal" in the cold. Here in this

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sonnet, though, there is no cry, but only a quiet resignation to the ultimate truth of the same figure, subtly insinuated by the
subordination of the human object to the global icon of seasonal imagery. This emphasis on the truth of the imaginal icon thus
harmonizes perfectly with Shakespeare's development of the typology in the controlling metaicon: Because the terrestrial
phenomenon of the seasons is larger than man, man's changes as configured by that larger phenomenon point higher still to a
third thing, the lawfulness and reasonableness of it all. Lear in the storm understood the analogy; Shakespeare in old ageafter the
storm had passedunderstood the "metaphor."
The sonnet's second stanza recapitulates and develops the same theme in a new key, a minor key but at a quickening tempo: the
metaicon of life-day. The movement to a shorter time frame (from the basic unit of a season to that of a day) implies that time is
growing shorter for the poet. Nevertheless, the shift is unobtrusive, hardly noticeable at all if the quatrains are not separated on
the page. More important, Shakespeare once again reverses the polarity of the congruence, fronting the icon of "twilight" into a
role as object and asking us to view the (still unnamed and sublimated) other signs of time (advancing age) through that
illuminating perspective. The imagery harmonizes perfectly, for we next discover that this stage of twilight is "after sunset
fadeth," which perhaps signifies the loss of sanguine color in the old man's pallid complexion. Even when twilight gives over
completely to "black night," an extension of the controlling metaicon (day-life > twilight-agedness > night-death), the
cumulative impression is that this turn of events in the life of man is no more shocking or individually important than the
passage of a given day into night. The effect is not euphemistic; "black" night is perhaps frightening, certainly total and
unequivocal. But the sublimation of the object (death) suggests that the truth of death really is its iconic typification, via
objectification, in night.
In the very next line, the apparent actual or literal object surfaces for the first time in the poem. This "object" is also the final
"objective" (in time) to which all the metaphors in the poem are leadingdeath. No sooner does the word death explicitly surface
as a "final" object(ive) of all these icons, however, than it is immediately negated as such by being embedded inside yet another
icon "Death's second self," which is an icon for night (reinforced, perhaps, by an association of night and sleep). Thus not even
the word ''death" in this poem refers to death as a peculiar phenomenon fit to be considered as a (final) object unto itself; death
is here only part of a larger construct, a larger Sign, whose Interpretant is "rest." In the larger scheme of things, rest is the
general type of which both death and night are but two joint tokens.
Metaphoric truth is larger than our preconceptions of literal fact in this poem. This "truth" is the sense of "converging
significance' inherent in the metaicon of death-night. The usual interpretation of the associated analogy (death / life::

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sleeping / waking) is a great mistake, I believe. It is usually interpreted only as a diagram, in which the icon sleep is merely
made analogous to the "true" object, death. But Shakespeare has it right; he exploits the unique reciprocity of the metaicon,
which is the analogy's ultimate ground, to make death itself (the expected object) into a sign, part of an icon, which is itself part
of "something else," to use Peirce's words.
Again, what is this "something else"? It is Law. We in the twentieth century, with our powerful telescopes and ability to travel
in space, ought not to have to be reminded that the prevailing law or norm of space is exactly as Shakespeare saw it nearly four
hundred years ago--"black night," that "seals up all." In this way of looking at the universe, the trillions of stars, enclosed and
dwarfed as they are by a pervasive hegemony of infinite black nothingness, are but minute "exceptions" to the universal rule of
darkness. Why should this unending black vacuumbeing so lawfulfrighten us so? Only because, in our narrow view of things
beneath the tiny star which is our sun, we have come to look upon "light'' and "life" as the norms, to which cosmic darkness and
death thus appear to be strange, disconcerting aberrations. Shakespeare, I mean to suggest, saw beyond this narrow view. If we
are prepared to read the significance of his sonnet in such a way as to appreciate not just poetry but life more fully, we must
look beyond our animal-human fear of cosmic darkness and death to see these facts as they really are: utterly commonplace,
natural, normal, lawful.
With such a norm or law in mind, we are not likely to misread Shakespeare's use of the metaicon of death in terrestrial night as
a euphemistic analogy that might pleasantly obscure the truth of being sealed up in universal blackness. For just as the approach
of terrestrial night really is, quite literally, the turn of cosmic darkness around half our little world at a time, so dying really is a
return of the the life-energy to that actual state of inertia that circumscribes all motion (". . . and our little life rounded with a
sleep"Prospero, The Tempest, probably Shakespeare's last play). This is the rule of "rest," in Shakespeare's wording, to which the
work of a lifetimeif only we could see things as they really areis but a momentary exception. (It is this fact which makes life
exceptional.) To characterize this "rest" as "sleep" (our provision; Shakespeare called it the "seal" of "Death's second self")
should therefore not permit us to "sweeten" death in this poem with the prospect that we shall individually awaken from it.
Perhaps we shall, but that is not what the poem says. It does not say, "Death is only a short night," the usual misreading of the
death-night metaicon; it rather says the reverse, that night is death's second sign. Night does not obscure death here; it is
supposed to remind us of it. And while this reminder does not offer the hope of a supernatural, it implies that death is no more
peculiar or private an affair than is darkness or inertia. It therefore offers only whatever comfort

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may come from a correct understanding of a universal and natural law embodied in metaphoric truth. We may fully appreciate
this truth only if we understand that the icon (night) is not a substitute for the object (death), but that they are jointly signs of
one another, and that their reciprocal parallelism subsists not in the mind of the poet or reader, but in the "converging
significance" of a thirdness which transcends both them and us.
In the next stanza, however, as if to depict one last feeble attempt to counteract the gathering shadows which have grown to
black night in only eight lines, Shakespeare turns from death to life again, initiating the final and climactic metaicon:
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
or
life = fire
For a moment, perhaps, there is hope for light and warmth against the dark cold, but to Shakespeare's truth-seeking imagination,
the icon of fire is a changing thing, not a static image upon which to anchor false hopes; like everything else in the poem, fire
exists in time, takes its essential qualities from the universal laws of time and cyclical change. It is this truth about firenot its
light and warmththat captures Shakespeare's imagination and leads him once again to reverse the sign polarity, bringing the
expected icon of fire forward as an object in itself, fit to be turned over and over in imaginative time and space to see what
further mysteries of life it reveals. Shakespeare's shift into the climactic new key of this fourth and final metaicon is therefore in
perfect (though varied) harmony with the whole poem. True, his mind seems to be following the ordinary animal-human process
of associative need (perhaps the same "need" which draws insects to a light in the darkness also led primitive man to build his
first fires), but the true unity of the "fire-life" metaicon with the rest of the poem derives from the status Shakespeare discovers
fire to hold as both an object and a sign of time law (the type of which but another token is life-time).
The diagrammatic developments which Shakespeare builds within this overarching frame all turn upon an ironic truth about
time: Time must run out in order to come to its fullness; a fire must burn down before one gets ripe coals; one must die in order
to live-the life process is also the process of death. This is a truism of common proverbs, of course, but the energy and rather
rigorous (ana)logic of Shakespeare's interlocking diagrams rescues the truth from truism (lines 10-11):
fire [flame] / ashes :: youth / [decimation of old age]
ashes / glowing [coals] :: deathbed / [life force]
In order to experience the fire of life, the exuberant blaze of youth, something must be burned as fuel. The fuel, of course, is the
body and its very life force,

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decimating itself in the very expression of itself. The result of life-fire is clearly two-fold in Shakespeare's formulation: "ashes"
and "glowing" [coals].
Ashes may be taken as an image within the diagramsa sensory likeness, perhaps, to the wrinkled, ashen skin. But it is not
merely an image; it is an image within a diagram within a metaicon, whereby the ashes left from a fire are not just sensuously
"like" the decimated skin; they really are an instance of the same type of (chemical) results of oxidation which, in the carbon
cycle of life, appear as signs of old age. Science and poetry are but different modes of discovery, often of the same truths. Of
course, I am not suggesting that Shakespeare was drawing upon his knowledge of chemical oxidation. But neither am I allowing
that he just happened to have got the metaphor right. Perhaps he knew nothing about pyrochemistry or about organic hydroxyls.
But what he must have knownand known as a truth transcending both science and metaphoris that fire ¬ life and life ¬ fire. It is
precisely this reciprocal congruence, no mere accident of literary convention, which makes the image of "ashes" ring so true for
us today; the law creates the image and gives it perennial relevance.
Shakespeare, however, gets double duty from this image. Ashes not only parallel the decimated body in the first analogy, but
they parallel "deathbed" in the second. What lies on this "bed" is the fire at its present stage of life-"glowing," which I take to be
glowing coals. All is not yet ashes; a few embers of life remain. What do these embers parallel in the completed second
analogy?
The glowing coals could not logically represent the decimated body, since the body is the ashes on which the glowing coals lie.
I therefore have taken the coals to represent something like the "life force" or the spirit, the life-fire distilled down to its very
essence. I hope I am not going too far to suggest that one does not get coalsnot ripe or "glowing" onesexcept at the end of a
rather hot fire. This reading would seem to be suggested by the final line of this quatrain: "Consumed with that which it was
nourished by." One must have a hot fire in order to ''nourish"nurture or cultivatea good bank of coals; but the hotter the fire, the
more quickly its whole cycle is over, and even the coals are "consumed" by what nurtured them into being. A long, slow,
smouldering fire will last longer, but it never comes to that final ripeness of glowing coals. There is thus the faintest hint that the
poet does not regret the fire through which he has passed and which has brought him to bodily decimation, for it has also
nurtured in him a full and early maturity of spirit and understanding. The final irony of this "wheel of fire" (to borrow another
expression of King Lear) is that fact that nowwhen the human spirit has been brought to its fullest appreciation or understanding
of life, and is itself reduced to the very essence of the life forcenow, the "glowing" spirit has only a decimated body for its
place, a bed of ashes in which to lie and expire.

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With that one word expire (line 11), Shakespeare brings together, in a triple diagram, the unifying principle of the fire-life cycle
at its final end:
expire1 expire2 expire3
fire / burns out :: life / dies out :: lungs / breathe out
It is no surprise that words like expire develop such different (and yet somehow the same) senses in the language, or that poets
like Shakespeare exploit such words for their compression of different meanings into one. What is more interesting is the
question of what semeiotic principle fosters and governs the metaphoric growth of such linguistic meanings. When words like
expire, originally meaning to "breathe out," acquire additional senses such as "burn out" or ''die" or "terminate" (as when a lease
expires), surely it is no accident or mistake or arbitrary usage which just happens to catch on. True, "mistakes" or arbitrary
idiomatic codes are often adopted as conventionexamples abound in the study of slang and jargonbut for the most part these are
short-lived in the language and are usually restricted to usage among linguistic or cultural subgroups. Only those "mistakes" or
seemingly arbitrary innovations which we all somehow recognize as serendipitous tend to catch on and to survive for long. What
makes them seem 'serendipitous"? Many things, perhaps, but Shakespeare's use of the word expire suggests one possible
explanation: Could it be that the figurative extensions from the original meaning of expire naturally arose and continue to
survive in accordance with a metaiconic "final cause" of something like "breath ¬ life ¬ fire"? I suspect that Peirce would have
been amenable to the idea. Though it is certainly beyond the scope of this study (except for some brief suggestions in chapter 7),
perhaps linguists would do well to investigate the diachronic life cycle of such figurative extensions in the language not just as
linguistic, psychological, or sociological phenomena but as semeiotic patterns having a broader basis in nature.
At any rate, Shakespeare's use of expire is more than just clever diction or the exploitation of linguistic convention. True, by the
time of Shakespeare, expire had probably already acquired its euphemistic usage for "die." But his attribution of it, not to the
literal object of death but to the fire-icon of life points us back to the original meaning of the word-"to breathe out," in the sense
of "to breathe out one's last breath." In the history of the word, that latter sense was probably the allowing condition by which
expire was adopted as a euphemism for "die" (see O.E.D. 931). Shakespeare's reversal of the metaiconic sign-object roles,
however, along with his embedding of a triple diagram interlocking upon expire, strips the euphemistic convention away, and
we almost hear the dying man's last breath, in the hiss, perhaps, of an extinguished flame. The fact that this 'exhaust" of life is
sublimated and subordinated to the icon of a dying fire not only makes the metaphor more psychologically effective; it also puts
life and death into a new, but quite proper and correct, perspective.

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Thus Shakespeare has brought us in three quatrains from the time of old age, when still a season remains, through the day of
death, when only a few moments of twilight remain, down now to this final instant of breath. Note that the "space" frame also
narrows from stanza to stanzafrom the global icon of the seasons, to the narrowing hemisphere of light on the western horizon,
to the confinement of the deathbed, with the shadows closing in around the dying fire. In harmony with the narrowing time
frame from stanza to stanza, there is thus an increasing though sublimated sense of spatial claustrophobia, reinforcing the
suggestion of a last breath. In Peirce's terms, then, this whole poem becomes a sign; that is, its very stanzaic structure,
narrowing in space and time, becomes an icon of the fact that the poet's season, and now day, and now span of breath, are
approaching an end. Even this "stanzaic icon," though, is part of a reversible metaicon: The other side of spatial-temporal
''claustrophobia" is intimacy, which surfaces as a beautiful climax in the final couplet's tacit request and explicit thanksgiving for
the reader's love: "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,/ To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
Because of the poem's metaiconic frame, it is not just the poet we must love; it is life itself we must lovefor that we, too, "must
leave ere long."
We do not need Peirce's notion of the hypoicons in order to appreciate Shakespeare's consummate metaphorical patterning.
However, Peirce's formulation of "metaphor," as I read it, allows us to make explicit our sense of this sonnet as a structural and
thematic unity. Not only does Peirce's theory of the hypoicons call keen attention to the elaborateness of Shakespeare's
embedding of one kind of trope within another (appealing to all levels of the mind simultaneously), but it gives us a way of
explicating the poem's cumulative effect. Most importantly, Peirce's notion of law in which the symmetry and "converging
significance" of the metaicon obtain, I believe, encourages us to reconsider our lives in relation to the actual and general laws of
time and space, which are the ultimate vision of this poem. In the light of Peirce's ideas, Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 reflects much
more than his ingenious exploitation of literary and linguistic convention. Rather, it reflects his adherence to a universally true
semeiosis, of which his masterful creation and his genius itself are but an accurate Sign and Interpretation.

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V.
VEHICLE INTERPRETATION
THE PEIRCEAN INDEX IN
POETIC METAPHOR
The sort of metaphoric truth we have considered in chapters 2-4 is discovered by the reader through what Reinhart calls "focus
interpretation" (1976). As I view this process, it consists of the discovery of the icon(s) and the literal object(s), often left
implicit or unnamed by the poet, and a contemplation of the qualities or character which the object(s) and icon(s) share. As we
have seen, the similarity between the icon and object may be a simple sense quality, an analogical proportion, or a universal
congruence (first, second, or third Firstness). However, it is only because the Firstness of the similarity is embodied in the
Secondness of the metaphor that the metaphorical possibility becomes forceful and actual to the consciousness. This Secondness
therefore deserves careful attention in a complete interpretation or interpretive theory of poetic metaphor. Borrowing again from
Reinhart, I will call this attention to metaphorical dualism "vehicle interpretation."
Recall from chapter 1 the claim that the Two-ness of a genuine poetic metaphor must involve opposition between the two (or
more) sign referents. It is the "two-sided consciousness of effort and resistance" which for Peirce characterized our sense of
Actuality (CP 1.24). The dynamic linguistic actualization which poetic metaphor characteristically enacts upon vague possibility
(see PW 81) is therefore a function of the metaphor's semantic tension. The truth of metaphor is compelling, paradoxically,
because it is embodied in a "lie"an apparent impossibility which "flags our attention,'' invites us to consider more carefully, and
thus ultimately to sharpen our understanding of possibility. This sort of linguistic "red-flagging" function can be formalized and
studied under the rubric of Peirce's Index. Vehicle interpretation, therefore, I will undertake as a focus upon the Peircean Index.
Since a metaphorical index, as we have seen, does not exist for its own sake but exists first to 'indicate" the icon from whose
introduction in the metaphorical frame the index arises, does the index deserve to be studied in its own right?

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Given Peirce's theory of meaning as triadic (Sign-Object-Interpretant), the answer is emphatically yes. That is, if the semantic
tension is a genuine index which points us to an icon (its object), then the index is confirmed as Sign. But in Peirce's scheme, all
Signs which have Objects also have possible Interpretants (CP 4.536, 5.283; PW 32). Thus, if the metaphoric index reliably
indicates its object, the index must also have its own interpretant. The "meaning" of the index has not been exhausted by the
mere identification of its object (the focus). To assume that an index, metaphorical or otherwise, has no other meaning than that
of signifying its object is to make the mistake of reducing meaning to a two-part or dualistic phenomenon; in short, it is to make
the mistake of reducing meaning to mere reference, ignoring sense. Recalling figure 1.3, then, successful focus interpretation
confirms the "Indexical Hypothesis"namely, that the semantic tension is "meaningful." Thus confirmed as a sign, the index must
then be fully interpreted in its own right (vehicle interpretation). Of course, the interpretation of the index as sign in itself must
still be carried out with reference to the icon it points to; but in vehicle interpretation, the icon is considered in its role as object
of the index, rather than in its own role as sign of the metaphor's literal topic.
This perhaps overly elaborate scheme is merely an effort to formalize in Peircean terms what experienced readers of poetry
already know intuitively: Full literary appreciation and understanding of poetic metaphor consist not just of focussing on the
icon or of guessing the literal object of an icon, nor just of contemplating the actual reality of the character they share, but of
further considering how the semantic novelty of the trope (its indexical tension) functions aesthetically and semantically in the
metaphor and in the poem as a whole. When we think of it, this is something we all should know about the interpretation of
even non-literary indexical signs. Smoke, for example, is a sign of fire. Specifically, it is (mainly) an index of fire because it
shows that there is a fire, and because it indicates roughly where the fire is. Now to the merely curious would-be spectator of
the fire, that is probably the only "meaning" to be discovered from the smoke. But to the serious student of pyrochemistry, the
smoke holds additional properties of its own. Its color, its density, its shape, the vigor with which it rises up, even its particle
composition, can often reveal more about the fire itself than we can understand by merely staring at the flames. Similarly, a
careful analysis of the semantic indexical tension arising from the vicinity of an icon in poetic metaphor can often yield fresh
insights about the iconic character itself, refining our understanding and appreciation of metaphoric truth. Only when the results
of vehicle interpretation ("figural displacement," in my terms) are fully considered in relation to the results of focus
interpretation (literal similarity) can we approach a Final Interpretant, and experience not just the reference of metaphor but the
meaning of metaphoric truth. The

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truth of poetic metaphor is demonstrated to be a far-reaching truth by its ability to arise as truth out of the metaphor's
configuring "lie"; even its similarity condition only fully emerges for what it is when we carefully consider, as a second (or
adjoining) step, the quality and condition of its paradox, its condition of dissimilarity.
Further, it is possible that metaphoric dissimilarity is actually afirst condition for the poet's process of poetic invention (just as
the semantic tension is an Immediate Interpretant which first challenges the reader to look for an icon). Shapiro and Shapiro
write:
The preexisting condition acts as a springboard for the onset of the figural situation and simultaneously imposes a
constraint on the combinability of the signata: they must differ in respect of at least one of the conditions. It is this
constraint which prevents knife from being a trope forfork, or vice versa (ad Todorov 1974: 128), since both words do not
differ in any of species, context, or rank. Note, however, that in aphasic (i.e., pathological) speech knife and fork can be
commuted for each other (Jakobson 1971: 250). (Shapiro and Shapiro 1976: 7)
Let us examine this constraint more closely. As often happens in discussions about metaphor, no sooner does some scholar
make a pronouncement about what can or cannot be a trope than some student thinks of evidence to the contrary. Linguists in
the pragmatics (speech-act theory and generative semantics) schools of thought, which often hold that metaphor is a purely
contextual or social phenomenon, are especially fond of creating possible contexts in which anything can be considered as a
metaphor for anything else. Given Peirce's notion that everything in the universe is a potential sign of something else (CP
5.448n), the creation of possible-world contexts is no trivial exercise. In the case of knife andfork, for instance, suppose we
create a context in which the two words might become parts of a metaphor. Imagine, if you will, a bedraggled camper returning
from an outing for which he was obviously ill-equipped. He tries to explain how he managed to eat his canned pork and beans
without a mess kit: "My pocket knife was my fork and spoon. Now, surely the expression is intelligently figurative, not aphasic.
Ordinary speech is replete with such utterances which, in appropriate context, we accept as metaphorical (or as metonymic)
rather than dismissing them as mistaken or pathological.
Yet this example actually confirms the Shapiros' point, I think. What the invented context does for the example is to create a
situation in which the slight differences between knives and forks and spoons become tellingly significant (we see the poor
camper slurping bean sauce from a knife blade instead of a spoon). By contriving to increase the perception of dissonance, then,
this context for the counterexample actually affirms the importance of dissimilarity as an allowing condition of metaphor.

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Further, even the manufactured significance of dissimilarity in this case is not enough to make "My pocket knife was my fork
and spoon" into a poetic metaphor. I will argue that the dual (or more) referents of a poetic metaphor typically differ not just in
rank or in context but in species. Consider the following sentence: "Anchorage is Albuquerque." This sentence is unpoetic, I
think, even if it is generously interpreted as metaphor. Anchorage and Albuquerque, while different in geographical context, are
perceived as members of the same species (city). Thus there is not the right kind of semantic tension to qualify as a genuine
index pointing (reliably) at either city as a metaphorical icon of the other. In fact, unless and until we have a context suggesting
the provisional assignment of figurative icon and object rolessay, the sentence is spoken by a tourist from Albuquerque who is
noticeably disappointed to find a shortage of log cabins and igloos in Anchoragethen we might just as well consider the
sentence a mistake or a sign of pathology.
However, when a dissimilarity in species is introduced, the results are clearly metaphorical and much closer to being poetic:
"Anchorage is freeze-dried Albuquerque." The species dissimilarity introduced by freeze-dried immediately qualifies this
sentence as metaphorwithout the help of special context, please notebecause it is this that identifies freeze-dried Albuquerque as
a figural icon for the literal object, Anchorage. (Of course it also identifies freeze-dried products as a figural icon for both
cities.) To interpret the sentence, we do not need to know the context (it is a slightly modified version of something I read in
John McPhee's entertaining book about Alaska, Coming into the Country, 1977) for even if we do not know that the speaker is
trying to be clever or metaphorical, the sentence contains a genuine metaphorical index (species dissimilarity) indicating a clear
icon. I believe the sentence would be taken figuratively in almost any context. Even if it were spoken by a known aphasic, I
would think the speaker's prognosis was improving. The species dissimilarity is semantically interpretable even if it is not
consciously intended; if it is a mistake, it is a very serendipitous one. (See Walker Percy 1975: 64-82 for a splendid account of
"Metaphor as Mistake.") While context is often a facilitating factor in interpreting a metaphor, it is not an essential condition to
the identity of metaphor; what identifies something as a candidate for interpretation as metaphor is species opposition, for it is
this that provokes the search for a figural icon, its object, and their similarity. If this search is successful, the utterance is
confirmed as metaphor.
Once the similarity condition is discovered, however, the interpretation (if it is a fully appreciative and cooperative one) is by no
means over. The careful interpreter is then led to consider the similarity in relation to the dissimilarity. In the case of Anchorage
and Albuquerque above, the literal similarities might be that both cities have modern conveniences, shopping centers, flashing
signs

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and billboards on the streets, and so forth. They have a similar ambiance and style. If that is all, the speaker might just as well
have said, "Anchorage and Albuquerque are alike in several ways." But that is not what the speaker said. He said that
Anchorage wasfreeze-dried Albuquerque. This species dissimilarity is what makes an additional comment about the two cities'
similarity. First, it suggests an irony in the similarity in view of the radical difference in climate (freeze-). Second, it implies that
the similarity between the two cities should further be interpreted as something like the "packaged artificiality' of their shared
ambiance (-dried), a condition of "modern urban blight." Further, the dissimilarity between freeze-dried products and both cities
insinuates that such instances of urban blight are particularly "tasteless" or "hard to swallow"; for if freeze-dried comestibles are
not palatable (being at least properly sized for human consumption), what of the rather large ''menu" of urban blight one gets in
a city the size of Anchorage or Albuquerque?
Thus, what species dissimilarity means in relation to literal similarity in metaphor is an important interpretive question. Without
vehicle interpretation of the index, the ironies and subtleties of or about metaphoric truth are ignored.
Nevertheless, the importance of figural tension as a sign in itself has frequently been ignored, underestimated, and often even
denied. Michael Reddy, for example, presents instances of "metaphor" which he says involve no formal semantic tension or
oddity at all; a typical case he presents is this sentence (1969: 240-251):
1. The rock is becoming brittle with age.
Reddy correctly points out that this sentence would be taken literally in the context of a geological expedition, but that it would
be taken figuratively if spoken by one of a group of college students walking out of the office of some staunch old Professor
Emeritus. Therefore, Reddy would have us believe, metaphor does not entail any logical semantic difference; its identity as
metaphor is purely a contextual consideration; and formal semantic accounts of metaphor must be replaced with a pragmatic
contextual theory.
What Reddy does not seem to have considered, as Robert Matthews points out (1971: 413-425), is that his sentence 1 above is
not itself a "metaphor." Matthews's rebuttal in no way denies the importance of context; he admits that it is the context of the
students with the Professor Emeritus which would cause any sensitive listener to construct a mental metaphor such as the
following:
2. The old Professor Emeritus is a brittle rock.
It seems clear that this construct, a reasonable entailment from Reddy's sentence 1 in the appropriate context, does indeed
involve the sort of "strangeness" or "oddity" which Reddy wants to banish from any account of metaphor. In

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fact, the novelty (species dissimilarity) of sentence 2 is probably the only thing that makes Reddy's sentence 1 worthy of
inclusion in an account of metaphor.
In fairness to Reddy, what he really wants to banish from metaphor study is the notion of "deviance," in the Chomskian sense of
"violation of selectional restriction." Though I believe Chomsky's grammar has been unfairly maligned in this regard, I now
consider the choice of the terms "violation" and "deviance" by those of us in the Chomskian school of syntax to be unfortunate.
Metaphor is natural. Ordinary discourse, not just poetic discourse, is transfused with it. It is not to be relegated to the
ungrammatical fringe of language, where it is about to fall off the edge into the pathological void; it is rather at the center of
language. Peirce himself expressed this view very aptly:
If a logician had to construct a language de novowhich he actually has almost to dohe would naturally say, I shall need
prepositions to express the temporal relations . .. , I shall need prepositions to express the spatial relations . . . , and I shall
need prepositions to express motions into and out of these situations. For the rest, I can manage with metaphors. (CP
2.290n)
Truly, language itself is inherently (though broadly) metaphorical, a fact confirmed by the continual growth of the lexicon within
language via metaphorical extension and narrowing (see chapter 7).
The only aspect of language that metaphor (in a narrow sense) may be said to "violate," in a creative way, is the set of
boundaries which all of us, including Reddy, recognize as marking it off from strictly literal discourse. Without some notion of
"boundary" between the literal and the figural, however unconscious it may be, even ordinary communication would be virtually
impossible. We would never know when someone was speaking literally as opposed to figuratively. Almost worse, without such
a boundary the delight of metaphor would be gone, because fresh metaphor as such would be gone, or at least be reduced to
simple counterfactual. Consider these two sentences:
3. The stars are glowing asteroids.
4. The stars are trembling diamonds.
Without a boundary of some kind between literal and figural discourse, these two sentences would have the same evaluative
status. That is, if only one set of habits applies to the interpretation of all sentencespresumably a set of merely contextual habits,
if Reddy and others are to have their waythen both sentences are simply wrong. In the absence of any immediate linguistic co-
text, the only "context" in which we could interpret (and assign a truth value to) the sentences would be our prior knowledge of
the world. Measured against that knowledge alone, both sentences are merely counterfactual. Worse yet, if we choose to dismiss
truth value from interpretation altogether, whereby communication becomes a sort of relaxed, pluralistic sharing of thoughts,
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contractual obligation to speak true, then sentences 3 and 4 must be considered equally acceptable and interesting. We would
have to admit that the creator of "glowing asteroids" had found an interesting way of thinking about stars; and John Keats, who
thought of the stars as 'trembling diamonds" (chapter 3), would deserve no better.
All of us, I think, know better, however. If a child wrote that the stars are "glowing asteroids," a good science teacher would
offer gentle correction, approving the child's effort to generalize about heavenly bodies, but carefully explaining the difference
between stars and asteroids. Now what kind of a teacherof science or otherwisewould correct a child who wrote that stars are
"trembling diamonds"?
Perhaps there is some context in which "The stars are glowing asteroids" would be acceptable and even insightful. However, I
will venture that "The stars are trembling diamonds" would be interesting and insightful in any context (even if "inappropriate"
in a context which demands strict adherence to literal language). For instance, even if the sentence were spoken by a known
schizophrenic in a science class, I would think he was making progress. It is, if nothing else, the sign of a healthy imagination. It
is of course literally false, but somehow we know to (temporarily) ignore the literal "lie" in this case and assign instead a
figurative interpretation. How do we know? How, unless we recognize that the sentencewhether or not the speaker intended it to
do socrosses a recognized boundary between literal and figural truth?
Why, you may ask, do I not accord "glowing asteroids" the same benefit of doubt? That is an excellent question. My answer is
that it shows no figural indexicality in itself. It crosses no boundary I know of which marks off literal discourse from figural.
(Stars and asteroids, unhappily, are members of the same species in ordinary usage.) In fact, from a purely linguistic point of
view, the proposition 'The stars are glowing asteroids" is analytically correct. Morphemically, asteroid is aster- (star) + -oid
(like). So the purely linguistic sense of the proposition is analytic: "The stars are glowing star-like [bodies]." Thus even the
linguistic form, or mode of discourse, of this sentence is entirely literal. It stays well within the boundaries that circumscribe all
sentences that I, as a speaker of English, have the habit of evaluating as literally true or false. For this reason, I apply to it no
test of truth other than a literal test. In so doing, I find its sense circular (stars are star-like) and its reference faulty: The symbol
asteroid, by convention, actually refers to heavenly bodies which are like stars, in certain respects, but which differ from stars in
certain technical respects; these technical differences lack the quality or sufficient breadth to cause any engaging metaphorical
tension, and so I conclude that it is more reasonable to consider the sentence a technical mistake. This judgment accords, by the
way, with what Peirce said in the "Ethics of Terminology" about the metaphorical

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use of a symbol to apply to "different conceptions" from its original. Such use, he said, can be "rather helpful," but only under
two conditions: first, the two meanings (original and new) must be "strictly analogous in their principal suggestions"; and
second, the two meanings must be "remote from one another, both in themselves and in their occasions of occurrence"
(CP2.222, emphasis added). In other words, I think Peirce, too, would take the terminology "glowing asteroid'' for star as
mistaken usage rather than as metaphor, precisely on the second provision above.
Conversely, "The stars are trembling diamonds" presents an immediate figural indexicality because of the dramatic and
instantaneous clash of the fully lexicalized semantic markers on the sense of its words. We need not consult the context or our
technical knowledge of astronomy in order to identify the source of this tension. It is there at once, in the very nature of species
dissimilarity as reflected in the language. We feel it, we are delighted by it, we play with it; it points beyond the literal, crosses
the boundary to the figural, and we follow it with imaginative pleasure.
These boundaries between the literal and the figural, then, I believe to be real, but not in the sense that they offer any restriction
or obstruction to crossing. The tension we feel when we cross them provides the energy we need to go ahead in the search for a
higher truth. The lines described by these boundaries are usually clear (in the case of poetic metaphor, at least), but they are like
the lines of latitude and longitude on a map: They are there only to mark the progress of the metaphorical journey, not to impede
it.
On a Peircean map of metaphor, that is exactly the function of the boundaries. I believe that there is a whole network of these
boundaries and that we can map their major outlines in such a way as to plot the direction, the magnitude, and the implied final
destination of the journey the poet makes in the vehicle of metaphor. This is what I mean by "figural displacement" as a function
of the metaphorical index, the target of vehicle interpretation. In chapter 6, I will posit a preliminary version of such a map,
based loosely on Peirce's Categories and his theory of Being, and I will suggest how figural displacement occurs, as well as
what further meaning it initiates.
For the present, let us consider the hermeneutical necessity of such a map (or maps). We must have some sort of device to
measure the "semantic distance" (causing indexical tension) between a figural icon and its literal object in order to "fix the
range" of both the iconic and indexical interpretants. Specifically, if the semantic distance between the figural icon and its object
is small, the range at which an interpretant may be reliably fixed is also small (by analogy to the principles of triangulation).
Conversely, if the distance between the figural icon and object is large, then the interpretant may be reliably fixed at a greater
range. Although this is only an analogy, my days as a land surveyor convince me of

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its accuracy: To fix the range of a distant mark, one must "turn the angles" between two distant points of reference; if the points
of reference are too close together, one cannot get a reliable 'fix" on any but a 'shallow" mark.
I am suggesting that when the figural tension of a metaphor (a function of the semantic distance between its icon and object) is
slight, one had best not look too far out for an interpretant. On the other hand, if the semantic distance between icon and object
is large, then the reader's prerogatives are greater to go further with the interpretation. The Final Interpretant of a radical trope
(one in which there is a great distance between icon and object) must stand at a radically distant range, and the triadic area
circumscribed by this icon-objectinterpretant relation must be very large, accommodating a great number of (valid) Dynamic
Interpretants. But the Final Interpretant of a conservative trope (one in which there is only a small distance between icon and
object) is much closer to the Immediate; hence, there is less semantic space in such a triadic relation for a variety of Dynamic
Interpretants.
This is nothing new. Sapir has said (1977: 31):
The more remote the terms are from each other . . . the greater are the possibilities for making a variety of nonarbitrary
connections. This fact was fully understood by the surrealists ... who hold as a major tenet the value of arbitrary
juxtapositions as a way of achieving "a spark" leading to a fuller, more than real, insight into reality.
Given my position on the nature of genuine metaphorical similarity (chapters 2-4), I would offer only one slight qualification to
Sapir's statement: The juxtapositions in a poetic trope are not "arbitrary." Nevertheless it is clear that readers of an oxymoron,
say, in which the distance between icon and object is huge, have equally huge prerogatives of interpretation. As Marvin Ching
has shown in his fine studies of oxymora (1975a; 1975b; 1980), widely divergent reader interpretations of oxymora all exhibit
clear co-textual, contextual, and textual validity. On the other hand, "mild" metaphorsas in conversational examples, in which
the icon-to-object distance is perceived as negligibledo not encourage or justify great diversity of interpretation. The general
scope of interpretation, therefore, is at least partly a function of the semantic distance between icon and object.
Is there a way to measure such icon-to-object "distances" systematically? Probably there is no single 'map" of literal/figural
boundaries to serve this purpose; most likely, sensitive readers construct detailed maps in ad hoc fashion to fit the possible
world of the literary text they are reading. For instance, things which seem normal in Alice's Wonderland would seem
outlandish in The Old Man and the Sea. I believe it is possible, however, using Peirce's Categories and Metaphysics, to
construct the general outlines of a "master map'' which sub-

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sumes the possibility of many finer contextual maps, and which will work well for plotting the overall index of major figural
displacements in poetic metaphor.
I will begin by positing three conditions on which the degree of semantic distance between icon and object depends:
1. the nature of the boundaries crossed;
2. the number of boundaries crossed;
3. the direction of crossing(s).
A fourth condition might be added, namely, the number of times a given boundary has been crossed previously in the language
or in the special context of a literary work, since such repeated crossings tend to "erase" the boundary (permanently in the
language or temporarily in the special context of a given work). When a boundary begins to be erased, however, crossing the
boundary produces only a moribund metaphor; if and when the boundary is ever completely erased, crossing the boundary
produces only a dead metaphor-that is, it is really no "crossing" at all. Since I wish to consider relatively fresh poetic metaphor,
I will not consider the factor of boundary erasure.
Since the number of extant boundaries (condition 2 above) and the direction of the crossing (condition 3) both depend upon the
arrangements of the boundaries on the "map," I will defer those considerations until chapter 6, where I will offer a hypothetical
model of such a map. In the remainder of this chapter, I will consider only the first condition above: the nature of the
boundaries crossed.
Peirce's Categories considered ontologically would seem to suggest three kinds of boundaries that might be crossed in figural
displacement. These are represented in figure 5.1
Kind of Boundary Peircean Analogue Figural Displacement Tension Degree
1. Conceptual Possibility "conceptual leap" high
2. Existential Actuality "new experience" moderate
3. Conventional Habit "novel usage" low
Figure 5.1
Crossing a conceptual boundary (kind 1) produces the highest degree of tension because it predicates what we perceive as a
literal impossibility, a negation (at the indexical level) of what Peirce called "Formal Logical Possibility" (CP 3.527). (The
negation corresponds to my "Paradoxical Possibility," kind 1, figure 3.3.) Initially, we may get some sense of what it means to
cross such a conceptual boundary by considering anomalous expressions like the now famous "colorless green ideas sleep
furiously." It is conceptually impossible, under our present limits of mind, for something to be literally green and colorless at
the same time, and so forth. However, even when such an anomaly is devoid of any interpretation out of context, it can be
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it a diagrammatic frame. (I understand that someone has written a poem to give Chomsky's famous anomaly an analogical
contextI am sorry that I have not seen the poem; my apologies to the author.) To take another example, "triangularity barks"
crosses a clear conceptual boundary, and might for that reason seem to be utter nonsense, an indexical "tin finger" pointing
nowhere in an art mobile, and I think it very nearly is. Still, it can be rescued, if we are of a mind to do so, by placing it in a
context which suggests a diagrammatic frame (this, I confess, is one of my own best efforts):
Circularity whines
Rectangularity growls
Triangularity barks.
Note that the context helps us to interpret (I hope) the high indexical tension by duplicating it three times in parallel but
incremental fashion, thus making it seem purposeful; it points to a redeeming "similarity" between the relative "sharpness" of
sounds (whine, growl, or bark) and the relative "acuteness" of angles in the various geometric shapes (circle, rectangle, triangle).
I seriously doubt that this sort of "rescue' operation is the ultimate purpose of genuinely poetic metaphor, even if some paradox
or another is the first thing which occurs in the actual chronology of events in the poet's mind. The paradox may be first as a
psychological means, but it is not First as a semeiological goal. Poets typically cross conceptual boundaries, thereby creating
paradoxes in the contextual frame, during the intuitive discovery of natural icons; they do not manufacture icons out of the
contextual frame in order to rationalize natural paradoxes. The paradox is the vehicle; the icon is the focus. Nevertheless, if we
are not prepared to do both focus and vehicle interpretation, then we may underestimate the magnitude of the "conceptual leap"
the poet has made in this sort of metaphor, thereby underestimating the interpretive possibilities of the iconic ground itself.
Carefully considered, Tom Sexton's metaphor (discussed in chapter 3) twice crosses a conceptual boundary; yet the iconic
possibility it captures in so doing gives the metaphor an aesthetic and semantic ease which belies its conceptual effort:
Our words float before us
In fine syllabic nets
Of frost ....
Floating words and syllabic nets are no more "possible" in Peirce's "Formal Logical" way than are barking triangles. The
metaphor takes a big "conceptual leap" which is easily lost sight of because it "lands" on something subtly true. (Contrast the
absurdist Squircle!square + circlewhich leaps but apparently never lands on solid iconic ground.) Still, the semantic tension of
the

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Sexton metaphor is very high when considered in itself. And more importantly, when the tension is considered in relation to the
iconic content, an additional purpose or function perhaps emerges. Specifically, the indexical tension brings into sharp relief that
sense of "delicacy" in the syllabic nets of frost; the paradoxical impossibility of the index also reinforces the subtle sense of
ineffability which arises from the whole figure (as an iconic possibility): its feeling of evanescence, of words that escape the
frozen breath, of thoughts which cannot be captured in words, just as words cannot be captured in "syllabic nets." Here, then, the
crossing of conceptual boundaries not only allows a discovery to be made beyond the boundary, but the conceptual tension of
the crossing itself seems to enhance the discovery.
Next, consider the more moderate tension created by the crossing of an existential boundary (kind 2 in figure 5.1). By this I
mean a boundary imposed by the accidents of existence or actuality and not by any logic of possibility. Peirce wrote: "Of those
[combinations] which occur in the ideal world some do and some do not occur in the real world; but all that occur in the real
world occur also in the ideal world.... [For] the sensible world is but a fragment of the ideal world" (CP 3.527). For those
inclined to smirk at Peirce's rather blatant Platonism here, consider the following paradigm in figure 5.2.
1. 2.
Crossings of Existential Crossings of Conceptual
Boundaries Boundaries
a green snowflake a green idea
a square baseball a square circle
a 100-pound feather a 100-pound relativity
a barking butterfly a barking triangularity
a steel mine a time mine
Figure 5.2
It seems clear to me that the items in column 1 could occur in the actual world, though to my knowledge they have not occurred
there. (These correspond to my "Negative Possibility," kind 2, figure 3.3.) Because, so far as I know from experience, they have
not occurred in actuality, they cross only experiential or "existential" boundaries and thereby obtain a moderate degree of
semantic oddity or tension (creating the sense of a new experience, but not requiring a modification of conceptual possibility).
Unlike the items in column 2, which cross conceptual boundaries, the items in column 1 are ideally possible, although they are
probably only "negative possibilities," which consist in my own "ig-

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norance." Peirce said, "If we do not know that there are not inhabitants of Mars, it is subjectively possible that there are such
beings" (CP 4.573). Thus crossing an existential boundary does create a moderate surprise in metaphor, requiring moderate
imaginative effort, but the tension and the effort are not so great as when we cross a conceptual boundary. "We know in
advance of experience," Peirce wrote (emphasis added), "that certain things are not true, because we see they are impossible."
Conversely, we can "by ideal experiments'' imagine that 'certain combinations [can] occur," also in advance of experience (CP
3.527). However, we must cross an existential or experiential boundary to so imagine them. Leaping a "gap" in Actuality
requires less imaginative effort, producing less semantic tension, than does leaping a gap in conceptual Possibility.
For this very reason, the more moderate tension of crossing an existential boundary helps to initiate the nonpoet reader into the
more radical dynamics of the conceptual leap. In Sexton's metaphor, for instance, I think "nets of frost" crosses only an
existential boundary. I have never actually seen what I could identify as a net made out of frost; I have seen nets made out of
string and rope and wire, but never of frost. Under a microscope, of course, frost seems to be composed in a network, but
Sexton's metaphor is the reverse of thatit is not frost made of nets, but nets made of frost. He asks me to imagine my frozen
breath forming a fine lattice in the cold air, something I have never experienced, or at least never noticed beforebut something I
can instantly "see" as an image. This possibility makes me more at home with the whole metaphor. What is more, the fact that
this possible image is not actual, not experientially so, creates a moderate imaginative tension which makes the radical tension in
the rest of the metaphor more purposeful: "Nets of frost," a metaphorical image, a new experience, helps build up the level of
imaginative energy needed to interpret the abstract metaphorical diagram of "syllabic nets," the bigger leap, a new conception.
Thus we see that there are different levels of tension and that they work togetherrather than against each other, for shock effect
alonein a really fine poetic metaphor.
In other metaphors, rarely "poetic," yet a third kind of tension obtains: the tension of crossing a merely conventional boundary, a
boundary created by habitual association of a given predicate with a certain range of objects in ordinary usage. The predicate
bark, for instance, is habitually associated with dogs, less often with seals (in zoology), and even less often with birds (only in
ornithology). Thus you will probably feel only a very low level of figural tension when I tell you, quite honestly, that I have
actually heard a man bark. This person, in an actual experience of mine, apparently thought he was a dog, and he was not
merely saying "Bow-wow!" which of course would not qualify as an actual bark at all. Instead, he was making a sound for
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more accurate (albeit mildly metaphorical) description than "barking," and it was much closer to the usual and immediate
reference of barking than is the sound made by a seal or by a squirrel or, certainly, by any bird that I have heard. The figural
tension you feel, probably in the form of amusement, when I describe this man's behavior as "barking" obtains from your
habitual associations with barkthat is, from conventional usage. No boundary of actual experience (contrast a barking butterfly)
or of possible conception (contrast a barking triangularity) is crossed by the predication of a barking human. The boundary
crossed is merely a matter of linguistic convention. This seems to be true of most tropes which predicate animal behavior of
human objects. These metaphors produce only a very minor tension, arising from the fact that many "animal" predicates are
conventionally reserved for non-human animals. But both in our actual experience and in our logical conceptions, human beings
really are animals; thus to say that a human barked, or did anything else normally associated with non-human animals, is not
necessarily to cross a boundary of the empirically actual, and it is never to cross a boundary of the conceivably possible. It is
usually only to cross a conventional linguistic or social boundary which reflects our habitual usages and cultural attitudes.
I believe it is the rather low tension, and thus the imaginative ease, with which such merely conventional boundaries are crossed
that has led some students of metaphor to the false conclusion that all figurative "crossings" are simply of the unconventional
kind. Henle, for example, defines metaphor as a mere transgression of convention (1958). Bickerton (1969) and Reddy (1969)
fall into the same trap. This is an easy mistake to make if we consider only conversational metaphor, which is most often a mere
unconventional stretching of usage. It is also a natural mistake for another reason: Conventional linguistic norms are not always
purely arbitrary. That is, Peircean Habit, because of its Thirdness, includesalong with arbitrary rulesconventions which are
themselves linguistic or social reflections of the laws of experience or of conceptual possibility. Thus all crossings of conceptual
or of existential boundaries can be expected to cross conventional boundaries as wellthat is, redundantly. We must not, however,
assume the converse; not every crossing of a conventional boundary necessarily entails crossing an existential or conceptual
boundary.
For instance, suppose an eccentric old bachelor calls the veterinarian to announce that his pet parakeet is "decidedly
uncomfortable!" The mild figural tension we feel, in the form of amusement, obtains from the crossing of a mere conventional
boundary of linguistic usage. There is absolutely no reason, when we think of it, not to believe that birds really are comfortable
or uncomfortable at any given time. It is just thatgiven our egocentric habitswe do not normally concern ourselves to that extent
with the feelings of the poor things. The old bachelor's parakeet probably is uncomfortable (in actual experience). Sure-

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ly no one would deny that a bird could be uncomfortable (in conceptual possibility). We simply do not normally put it that way.
The usage is unconventional.
Conversely, we must not equate the figural displacement of all metaphor with its (often) redundantly unconventional use of
language. Let us examine this principle of redundancy more closely. It is easy to see, in the poetic examples of metaphor we
have been considering, that every crossing of a conceptual boundary necessarily entails the crossing of existential and
conventional boundaries as well. When I say that my "words float in syllabic nets of frost," of course I am using unconventional
language. But the mere oddity of the usage hardly accounts for the strong indexical tension of the trope. I do not have the habit
of talking about words in this way for a simple reason: I have never experienced a word literally floating in a syllabic net of
frost. Further, I have not experienced such a thing because there cannot (literally) be such a thing. Words (not the acoustic
tokens of words) are abstract symbols; abstractions do not, because they cannot, literally have mass or material shape (more at
chapter 6). In this case, then, a conceptual paradox expresses itself (redundantly) as both an existential anomaly and an oddity of
convention.
Thus metaphoric tension, which in verbal metaphor always includes unconventional uses of language, cannot be fully explained
in terms of such, unless we are to abandon the hope of measuring those variations in semantic distance between the figural signs
and literal objects of different tropes, on which variations their interpretants partly depend. Further, defining metaphoric
indexical tension solely in terms of a departure from linguistic convention obstructs inquiry into the metaphorical dimensions of
other than purely linguistic signs and objects in a literary work. The characters, the actions, the very structure of the work itself
can all be indexical and iconic (as we have seen in chapter 4 with a sonnet by Shakespeare). An adequate theory of metaphor
must therefore be semeiotic, not just linguistic.
Peirce's semeioticbased upon his Categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, subsuming (respectively) Possibility,
Actuality, and Habitallows us to distinguish the varying degrees of conceptual, existential, and conventional (including
linguistic) tension in the metaphorical index. So far, we have considered two reasons why it is important to make these
distinctions: first, because the metaphorical index points to an icon which it contains, the different kinds of tension shape the
iconor our perception of the iconin various ways, thereby coloring or changing our evolving view of the icon and its object, as
well as of the similarity condition they share. Second, the various kinds and degrees of indexical tension interact among
themselves, frequently producing a gradual "build-up" of semantic indexation, thereby facilitating the nonpoet reader's
interpretive progress towards higher levels of linguistic, existential, and concep-

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tual possibility (in the icon) which lie just beyond those same levels of impossibility in the index.
With regard to this second phenomenon, it should perhaps be noted that twentieth-century poetic metaphor (as well as metaphor
from the metaphysical school of poets in the seventeenth century) often employs the different kinds and degrees of indexical
tension to different effect: Rather than a gradual "build-up" of tension, we get sudden, jarring shifts which seem almost
calculated to distort, or even to overthrow, the hierarchy of the conceptual, the actual, and the conventional. In such cases
(passages from Eliot and Donne come to mind), the strange or surrealistic effect can often be studied to advantage by isolating
the unexpected fluctuations in level, as well as the non-sequential shifts in kind, of semantic tension. I will offer some
suggestions about this in chapter 6.
Poets in the nineteenth century, however, seem "kinder" to the uninitiated reader, gradually increasing or decreasing the level of
semantic tension in such a way that all the different kinds of indexation work together to produce a single unified Index,
orienting the reader by pointing in one direction only. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of one such example, from John
Keats again (Endymion, I, 453-456):
O Magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of
mind
Till it is hushed and smooth! O
unconfined
Restraint! imprisoned liberty!
The passage begins in low tension, with two crossings of conventional boundaries: the Magic sleep and the comfortable bird. As
already suggested, "comfort" is conceptually and actually predicable of birds; it is simply an unconventional predicate for non-
human animals. The tension is therefore so mild as to be hardly noticeable, effecting only a slight figural displacement of the
human ego (the habitual scope of comfort) into the image of the bird. The result is thus a subtle initiation of Keats's "Negative
Capability"his theory of poetic projection of the human spirit into that of other bodies or objects. "Magic sleep!" is also mildly
figural. To those who know Keats, this is no ordinary sleep; it is probably that trance-like state which he associated with poetic
visionary experiences. However, even the uninitiated reader of Keats might sense something unusual about this sleep: Magic is
normally associated with potions, charms, incantations, spells, and the like, not with sleep. ''Magic sleep" is therefore an
unconventional association (except in the special world of fairy tales); it does not, however, necessarily cross any boundary of
actual experience or of conceptual possibility. Given the existence of magic to begin with, at least as an actual psychic or
anthropological phenomenon, there is no difficulty in believing that sleep could beand in the case of a religious trance, actually
isthe

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result of magic as opposed to ordinary fatigue. The language in the opening line, then, is merely unusual, creating only a low
level of figural tension.
If we read the first line to mean that "sleep [is a] bird," then the indexical tension would be very high (a crossing of a conceptual
boundary). As it turns out, that is ultimately a connection which Keats wants us to make, but he does not ask us to make that
connection in the first line; rather, he merely places the object (sleep) alongside the eventual icon (bird) in loose parataxis,
without predicating the one as the other. It is only in the second line, with "broodest o'er the troubled sea," that the indexical
tension necessarily increases to the next levelthe crossing of an existential boundary. The image of a bird brooding over an
entire sea is more, I think, than a mere unconventional stretching of conventional usage. Even in its current figurally extended
sense, brood means "to hover envelopingly." The primary sense of brood is that of a bird sitting on eggs or enclosing the young
under its wings protectively. The primary sense is no arbitrary assignment of this predication to birds: Actual experience finds
birds doing just that, protecting the eggs or settling the young chicks beneath the wings. Keats, however, has this bird brooding
over an entire sea, hovering over it as if to settle its waves ("troubled sea"). Not only in ordinary word usage but also in actual
existence, birds do not do such a thing. It is conceivably possible, of course, that there could be a bird with a wingspan that huge
or a mission that halcyon-like (thus no conceptual boundary is crossed, here), but such is contrary to our extra-linguistic
experience with and knowledge of birds. (Recall that the notion of a "comfortable bird,'' conversely, is contrary only to linguistic
convention.) Thus the semantic tension of the metaphorical complex has increased to a second level in the second line,
significantly expanding our perception of the focal icon (bird) and orienting us toward even higher imaginative flights to come.
With "sea of the mind/ Till it is hushed and smooth," the tension increases to a third level, as a clear conceptual boundary is
crossed: mind => // => sea. Students of Peirce may here recall his notion of the "Quasi-mind" as consisting of the whole
universe, or his objective idealism, the theory that all matter is but effete mind (CP 6.25). For Peirce, then, the predication "sea
of mind" might not have crossed any conceptual boundary at all. In view of Keats's theory of Negative Capability, the
'conceptual leap" by which mind is reconstituted as sea might have seemed quite a small or natural step for him as well. For me,
though, and I suspect for most readers, this part of the metaphorical index requires a modification of conceptual possibility, not
just the imagining of a new experience. Indeed, that is precisely the value of this powerful index: Beyond the seeming
impossibility of mind becoming a sea, or of a sea being a mind, there is perhaps a very real possibility which Peirce and Keats
understood and

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would have us understand. In fact, I believe the icon within this index possesses metaiconic status: "mental growth ¬ spatial
expansion" or the like, here in the token of a poet's mind acquiring the expansiveness of a sea (more at chapter 6).
In any case, a bird broodinghovering envelopinglyover a sea is at least a spatio-conceptual possibility, however unconventional
the language or contrary to actual experience the image may be; but to stretch mind to the limits of sea and to reduce mind to
the substance of sea simultaneously is no mere unconventional usage, no mere suggestion of a new experience; it is a
philosophical leap, a radical reconstitution of conception itself. Moreover, with this conceptual boundary crossing, Keats at least
triples the effect by crystallizing the entire complex diagram in a single instant; "sea of the mind' becomes the typological key to
unlocking a series of interlocking analogies:
sleep /mind :: bird / sea
mind / troubles :: sea / [waves]
sleep / settles troubles :: bird / [smoothes waves]
This all happens at once because, as noted earlier, the sleep-bird connection is merely paratactic in the first line of the complex;
only when we discover in the second line that the bird is floating over a sea-mind are we asked to imagine, by analogy, sleep
"floating" over the human mind; this completed connection is necessary before we can construct the analogy in the third line,
that of sleep settling one's (mental) troubles as some huge halcyon's wings might smooth or suppress the waves of the sea as it
hovers over them. All three analogies involve the crossing of conceptual boundaries, so the indexical tension mounts
exponentially, driving the metaphor to a transcending metaiconic possibility.
Not only does this mounting tension thereby significantly reconfigure our perception of the iconic possibilities, but it continues
to serve its purely indexical function of pointing still further in the same direction of increasing imaginative and conceptual
complexity: "O unconfined/ Restraint! imprisoned liberty!" Here there can be little doubt about the crossing of conceptual
boundaries, for the cross-predications of restraint as lack of confinement, and of liberty as imprisonment, are in precisely
opposite directions. Except for the way in which Keats's indexical tension builds up to these radical oxymora, they might seem
hardly more than "squircles" or "colorless green ideas." Within the gathering trend of Keats's indexical patterning, however, the
radical oxymora represent the perfect aesthetic and semantic culmination of the metaphorical complex. Specifically, the building
indexical tensions of the whole figure find a simultaneous culmination and release, both in what the oxymora are (natural
paradoxes) and in what they say (that sleep is at once a release and a restraint of neuro-muscular tension, energy, and motion).
Hence, the distinctly kines-

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thetic index of the oxymora constitutes, in itself, something of an iconic overlay for the entire metaphor.
We see, then, that carefully reading the indexical tension helps us to understand how the whole passage, in its very indexical
pattern of organization, is a superb icon of sleep: The feeling of sleep is first mildly stretched to include the comfort of a
brooding bird; then the mind in sleep is both expanded and sublimated in the magnitude and vast unconsciousness of the sea;
finally, as if its longed-for "magic" were at last found out, the liberating restraint of sleep is captured and at once released in
pure conceptual abstraction. To be captured in such sublimity, of course, is to be imprisoned by freedom.

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VI.
VEHICLE INTERPRETATION
THE INDEX OF
FIGURAL DISPLACEMENT
In chapter 5, I developed some of the ways in which the kinds and degrees of figural tension in poetic metaphor function in its
semantic and aesthetic interpretation. Specifically, we have seen that the degree of figural tension depends, in part, upon the
kind of boundary the metaphor crosses (conceptual, existential, or conventional) and that these kinds and degrees of dissimilarity
facilitate the interpretation and re-interpretation of iconic possibility. However, figural tension only partly depends upon the kind
of boundary crossed, and the interpretive significance of the Peircean Index in metaphor is only partially accounted for as
conceptual, experiential, or linguistic displacement. The kind of boundary crossed is only one of three factors mentioned in
chapter 4 as affecting the quality and degree of figural tension:
1. nature of boundary crossed;
2. number of boundaries crossed;
3. direction of the crossing(s).
Having discussed the first factor in chapter 4, I now turn to the second and third factors which also figure prominently in
shaping and re-shaping poetic metaphor's meaning and delight.
It should be immediately clear that there is no way to consider the second factor (number of boundaries crossed) unless such
boundaries exist in some sort of numerical sequence, or at least in some countable order, with respect to one another. Similarly,
we cannot discuss the direction of boundary crossing (the third factor) without an ordered set of boundaries. The reason, as we
will see, is that poetic metaphor seldom crosses just a single boundary between contiguous categories or semantic domains;
rather, it characteristically makes radical leaps (though often in subtle stages) between widely separated domains, the semantic
space between which is not empty, but occupied and organized by other implicit domains that have been leapt over; while these
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always apparent during figural displacement, their intermediating reality and order tacitly mark and condition both the direction
and the outcome of the displacement which has been made across them. Moreover, poetic metaphor is typically a complex of
tropes inside of tropes; if an ordered sequence of major type boundaries can be hypothesized, we may then use it to "chart" the
direction of figural displacement in the metaphoric complex as a whole, rather than just the direction of displacement effected
by a single trope within the metaphorical complex.
Complex metaphors in poetry are not mere clusters of icons bound together by free association; rather, they are like highly
structured molecules, the iconic atoms of which build logically and hierarchically upon one another to form one main substance
whose molecular identity is greater than the individual identities, or even the mere sum of identities, in its parts. In fact, it is the
hierarchical combinability of metaphoric icons into complex Icons which is partly responsible for the growth of new dimensions
and qualities of meaning in poetry. I will arguefollowing Peircethat this growth of meaning is teleological, that the creation of a
new semantic molecule in complex metaphor is but a discovery or re-discovery, in miniature, of a universal semeiosis to which
the growth of all meaning conforms.
Considered ad hoc, the properties of a given metaphoric molecule appear distinct from every other. After many are considered
over a period of time, however, the apparent novelty of the processes by which they come into being and grow begins to acquire
a sensed pattern of movement between ordered stages of growth. Still, the evolution from one stage to another is so subtle and
rapid, and the implied pattern so organically continuous, that it is difficult to codify the pattern of stages by merely continuing to
examine individual metaphors at the microscopic level. This motivates the construction of a hypothetical model for further
testing against a diversity of individual metaphors. The hypothetical model I will offer in this chapter is based loosely on Peirce's
theory of Being; it is an effort to sketch only the broadest outlines of what I believe is a semantic macrocosm to which the
microcosm of the metaphorical molecule often conforms in its structure and evolution.
Here, I will treat this evolution as "short-term" growth reflected in patterns of instantaneous figural displacement in poetic
metaphor. By "figural displacement" in this sense, I mean to suggest that the "tension" of the metaphor (temporarily and
imaginatively) "moves'' or "pulls" the literal object in the direction suggested by its figural icon. To be sure, this is only a partial
treatment of the growth or evolution of meaning in metaphor; we will see in chapter 7 that much more is involved. Nevertheless,
as we have already seen, it is figural predication across semantic boundaries which produces semantic tension in metaphor;
semantic tension, the indexical component, significantly configures and re-con-

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figures our perception of the iconic content. Just as the semantic tension of a single trope crossing a single boundary is an index
of its icon, so the semantic tension of a metaphorical complex crossing a sequence of boundaries is an index of its more complex
iconic structure and more radical evolution. This sort of figural displacement, considered alone, does not constitute the semantic
growth of poetic metaphor; it is simply one index of that growth. Still, it affects the final outcome of that growth as surely as it
indicates its direction.
Again, however, if the figural displacementthe sequence of "object > icon" movements across type boundariesis to be considered
even as an index of growth (as opposed to random change), then the sequence of boundaries crossed must be ordered with
respect to one another. I would not presume to offer an exhaustive catalogue of such boundaries, let alone to delineate their final
order or hierarchical arrangement. Such an undertaking is most likely impossible. As we have already seen with examples like
knife andfork (chapter 5), a boundary (perceived dissimilarity) which has little relevance or interest in most contexts of discourse
may have a peculiar relevance or importance in a special context. The context of each poem or literary work is special.
Therefore, perhaps sensitive readers freely construct or dismantle hierarchies of perceived type boundaries to fit the possible
world of the text they are reading. My objective is simply to sketch the broad outlines of a "master hierarchy" which I believe
has manifold power for charting major figural displacements across type boundaries widely recognized in Western thought and
poetry. Within the overarching frame of this hierarchy, I believe, there exists a multitude if not infinitude of possible refining
categorical distinctions which I will of course not attempt but which are readily activated by the contexts of individual literary
works.
Nevertheless, the implication of my turning to Peirce for some general suggestions for the design of this hierarchy should be
clear. I believe that the boundaries and their arrangements are real, not merely the idiosyncratic creations of individual contexts
or even of Western thought in general. Some of them, to be sure, reflect Western "habits" of mindespecially some of my own
extensions, at the lower end of the hierarchy, from Peirce's ontology. But because I believe that these are logical extensions, I
think they are what Peirce might call "future facts of Secondness" (CP 1.26). That is, the proliferation of distinctions they
represent is consistent with Secondness, subsuming Actuality, just as Actuality (as we have already seen) is subsumed by
Reality. Even those boundaries of the hierarchy which are perceived to be matters of Western linguistic or cultural convention
have at least a basis, I believe, in reality.
The consistently dualistic principle upon which I will delineate the categories of the hierarchy requires some comment. A more
detailed "map" of type boundaries would of course not be restricted, as this hierarchy is for simplicity's sake, to merely binary
distinctions. The purpose to which I wish to put the hierar-

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chy, however, is mainly to account for the Secondness of metaphorical oppositions; the map is designed to provide a general
indexical framework for charting only the latitudinal movements of metaphor across broadly recognized type boundaries. While
complex metaphors cross many boundaries, often more than one at a time, we need not chart more than one at a timethat is, the
crossing of a single boundary between two contiguous categories by one figure, and then of another by another, and so onin
order to get a preliminary index of the complex metaphor's overall displacement of its object(s) in semantic space. In no way is
this map intended to account for all that is going on in a given metaphor; whatever usefulness it has is precisely its limitation to
the principle of Secondness, the indexical function of gross binary opposition.
With this limitation in mind, let us turn now to the structure of the hierarchy. I begin with a few pointers from Peirce. (It is
beyond the scope of this study to reconstruct his theory of Being in its totality; readers who wish a more thorough treatment of
this subject are referred to the readings suggested in my Preface.)
One of Peirce's notions about the nature of abstract truth was "that of everything, being is true universally" (CP 6.352). This is
"universal Firstness," or "the mode of being of itself" (CP 1.531). Naturally, then, I will use Being as the supervening node of
the hierarchy.
This Being, however, is not limited to existence; rather, existence is a special mode of reality, as reality is a special mode of
being (CP 6.349). The actually existing world is thus an off-shoot of a larger world, as Peirce wrote: "From this point of view
we must suppose that the existing universe, with all its arbitrary secondness, is an off-shoot from, or an arbitrary determination
of, a world of ideas, a Platonic world" (CP 6.192). Without attempting to settle the debate of whether Peirce was (finally) a
Platonist or a Realist, I will simply note that Ideas, as such, were Real for him when he wrote his "Neglected Argument for the
Reality of God" in 1908; and he thought Ideas were real before they came into existence, even before they were thought (at least
by humans):
Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the
mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within the mind. Their very airy-
nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking
them, saves their Reality. (CB 1166: 91, emphasis CSP's)
This "first" Universe, or universal Firstness, might then be described as the realm of "Possibility"except for one subtle but very
important difference. As Peirce explained, "The word possibility fits it, except that possibility implies a relation to what exists,
while universal Firstness is the mode of being of itself" (CP 1.531, emphasis added). Indeed, as we have already seen in earlier
chapters,

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while "every general idea has more or less power of working itself out into fact" for Peirce, some ideas have this power "more
so," while others "less so" (CP 2.149). Ideas, as possibilities, have different degrees of persistence, or tendencies to get
thought/actualized (CB 1166: 104; W3:317-319). Thus, while the whole Platonic world is "real" (CP 6.200) in a sense, Peirce
seemed to be more interested (as I am) in those modes of ideal reality which exhibit persistence: ''The reality of things consists
in their persistent forcing themselves upon our recognition. If a thing has no such persistence, it is a mere dream. Reality, then,
is persistence, is regularity" (CP 1.175). It is this way of thinking about Reality which allowed Peirce to say that things "are
getting less dreamy and more real" as the universe evolves (CP 1.175, emphasis added).
Thus I wish to consider Being in its most general sense to include all ideas, from indeterminate or "dreamy possibilities" to
"positive" and "irresistible possibilities" (chapter 3), which do imply a (potential) relation to actual existence. I believe this is
what Peirce had in mind when he began defining his Categories for Lady Welby by "giving to being the broadest possible sense,
to include ideas as well as things, and ideas that we fancy we have just as much as ideas as [sic] we do have" (PW 24).
In order to bifurcate Being in accordance with these suggestions from Peirce, I will borrow his definitions of two kinds of
possibility:
Mere possibility: that of a state of thing which might come to pass, but, in point of fact, never will ....
Metaphysical possibility ought to mean a possibility of existence, nearly a potentiality. (CP 6.371)
Peirce may not have presented these two definitions, here, as describing mutually exclusive kinds of possibility in his own
theory of Being; that is simply the use I wish to make of them in the hypothetical model I am presenting. "Mere possibility," as I
conceive it, would include my "paradoxical" and "negative" possibilities (kinds 1 and 2, figure 3.3), or ideas which (though
possible) are unmotivated towards the entelechy of Being. Conversely, "metaphysical possibility" would include my "positive"
and "irresistible" possibilities (kinds 3 and 4), or ideas which have an innate capability (in the case of the positive) or tendency
(in the case of the irresistible) to get actualized in nature or in thought. Since this "capability" or "tendency" may or may not
have yet actually emerged (in nature or in thought), I will treat the Actual as a subset of Metaphysical Being. Thus the
Metaphysical in this scheme would include the Actual and the Potential (the latter as opposed to the "merely" possible). Perhaps
these relations will seem clearer in figure 6.1.
The Actual, as we have seen, was for Peirce the realm of "force and resistance," the domain of "brute" physical (though not
necessarily material) reality

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Figure 6.1
(CP 1.24). Thus anything that moves, including material mass or pure energy, I will take as an example of the Actual. However,
since it is possible for two opposing (actual) forces to be in equilibrium, or for a thing to exist in a (dualistic) state without
actual motion, I will further divide the Actual into the Motive versus the Stative. Of course physical bodies or materials which
are apparently in a "state of rest" are actually in motion, as we would know if only we could see the vibrations of their
molecules, but I have in mind something else in my distinction between Motive and Stative Actuality. I will consider a thing's
being in a certain position in space as a case of Stative Actuality, not by reason of its materiality or molecular motion, but by
reason of its predicability of position alone. For instance, I wish to consider even a point in (prescribed) space as an actual thing,
not simply a potential thing; though I recognize that a point can be considered a hypothetical abstraction, the "mark" of which
on a piece of paper is but a physical instantiation, it seems to me that a point in space, at least in the sense of a "coordinate"
point, meets Peirce's fundamental criterion of Actuality: It is at the intersection of two dimensions, a kind of Secondness,
whether these dimensions or their intersecting point are plotted on a physical graph or not. At least in the study of metaphor,
things which are literally predicable of position in space possess a kind of Actuality lacking in pure or true abstractions (even
those which suggest potential relations to the actual). Thus to say that a point is here or there in space is literally either true,
false, or approximate. But to say that an abstract thing like ''Truth" or 'Beauty" is here or there in space is to speak figuratively.
Position or Stative Actuality, then, is (for me) the primal instance of Actuality or the first occurrence of Secondness, although
for Peirce position may have been a case of Firstness. He said, "Position is first, velocity or the relation of two successive
positions is second" (CP 1.337). Still, my division of the Actual into the Motive and the Stative preserves Peirce's notion of the
relation between position and velocity; under my classification, all things literally predicable of motion are also (redundantly)
predicable of position; however, not all things predicable of position are also predicable of motion. A point in space, for in-

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stance, has position, but it cannot (literally) move; the appearance of such is the discovery of a second point. Thus to say that an
energy wave is moving or changing is to speak literally; but to say that the "peak" of the wave is moving or changing is to
speak figuratively. These distinctions are summarized and placed within the hierarchy, as so far developed, at figure 6.2.
Figure 6.2
The latter distinction, by which mere position in space is brought under the notion of Actuality, may seem overly technical or
semantic, but it turns out to be quite useful in plotting the figural displacement of the so-called "metaphor of ascent" in Western
poetry. By considering position in space as Actual, on a ground which excludes abstractions from that category, I formalize a
condition that helps to explain why so many poets tend to treat abstractions as "beyond space." This condition, as we will see,
semeiotically initiates a sense of spatial sublimity or expansiveness in the poetic metaphor of ascent.
In any case, this quibbling about whether a "point" is Actual or only Potential indicates something very interesting and important
about the nature of this hierarchy. When attempting to classify any given object in one of these categories, we will sometimes
encounter an ambiguity: does the object in question belong to this or that class? Such ambiguity, far from negating the logic of
the categories, actually affirms it. At least, the logic that it is supposed to reflect is a general teleology in Being: Future facts of
Secondness follow the Firstness of Possibility. Since any higher node in the tree precedes all lower nodes and branches, placing
an object under any given node automatically places it after all higher nodes in the hierarchy. For instance, placing a "point" or
"position'' under Actual [Stative] automatically places it under (indicating its "history" as) Metaphysical and Being; placing
position in the Actual also leaves it (now) only one step removed from abstract Potentiality, two steps removed from Mere
Possibility. We should therefore follow the general rule of placing any given

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object in the lowest category of which it is (under our present conceptions) literally predicable; that redundantly gives the object
a "pedigree" in all categories directly in line above it.
Additionally, when an ambiguity arises over which of two categories really is the lowest possible, we should take heart from the
fact that the two categories under consideration will always be (I predict) at least contiguous in the proposed hierarchy. For
instance, though I have engaged myself in the above debate over whether the lowest category of "position" is Actual [Stative] or
only Potential, at least the Stative and Potential are hypothesized to be contiguous categories. This suggests that they are
strongly related (which is, after all, what I mean by "potential" as opposed to 'mere possibility"), thereby making it natural that
the territory along this boundary should sometimes be in dispute. Keeping in mind that the purpose of this hierarchy is to index
the overall movement of figural displacement between categories, the occasional "fuzziness" that occurs near a type boundary
should not be alarming; it should simply remind us, first, that it is a model of organic phenomena we are constructing, and
second, it should encourage us to believe that the model may be coming close to something real. That is, I predict that cases of
ambiguity will occur only at boundaries between categories which the model supposes to be contiguous; thus the ambiguity
itself is one indication that the phenomena represented by the categories really are organically and ontologically continuous or
adjacent. I believe this is more or less in harmony with Peirce's doctrine of continuity or synechism in natural classes (see
Hookway 1985: 174ff.).
Conversely, a serious debate over which of two non-contiguous categories is the lowest predicable of a given object would
seriously undermine the model hierarchy, suggesting that the phenomena these categories are supposed to classify are not
organically continuous or ontologically adjacent in the way the model represents them to be. But that kind of ambiguity, I am
suggesting, will never occur. The model consistently predicts (as illustrated in the following discussion) exactly where
ambiguities and debates will arise over how to classify a given object: namely, between categories which are contiguous in the
model. This predictive capability attests to the model's (psychological and, I believe, ontological) reality.
Next, having 'narrowed" Being through Metaphysical > Actual > Motive, we may continue in the same direction to bifurcate
Motive as Inertial versus Energial, in order to account for the two general kinds of motive phenomena: those which have mass
(with literal predicability as Inertial) and those which do not (the pure energies, as Energial). Again, the "fuzziness" in some
cases: Is light a particle (Inertial) or a wave (Energial)? But again the fuzziness occurs between hypothetically contiguous
categories where, if the phenomena they formalize really are that strongly related, we should naturally expect the ambiguity

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to occur. Now note that a serious debate among scientists over whether light is Inertial particles or a only a Potentiality (non-
contiguous categories in the model) might seriously undermine this hierarchy; conversely, the particle/wave debate actually
tends to confirm this portion of the hierarchy. The hierarchy suggests precisely why scientists studying the Motive qualities of
light might find it useful to think of light sometimes as waves and sometimes as a stream of particles, but not sometimes as
particles and sometimes as an abstract possibility. For my purposes with metaphor, I will consider light as Energial which is
literally predicable of motion (it flashes, sparkles, speeds, crosses) but not literally predicable of inertia (pushes, pulls, settles,
sitsall of which are literally predicable only of masses). Thus "light pushes" or 'light settles" are mildly figural, mildly so
because Energial and Inertial are representations (as contiguous categories) of phenomena which are strongly and organically
related.
The Inertial I will further subdivide as Objective versus Amorphous, to capture the distinction between those masses which have,
or do not have, shape (by which I mean a full set of contours in three-dimensional space) or which are, or are not, literally
predicable of such. I have in mind that important category of change-of-shape verbs (crack, shatter, warp, break, and so on).
Things which are Objective (solids) are literally predicable of such changes in shape, but Amorphous matter (water, dust, gas,
antimatter) are not. The mild figural tension of "The surf shattered against the rocks" is mild because Amorphous and Objective
form a continuum which nonetheless seems to divide itself at an important juncture in our language and conceptions of the
universe.
Following well-known semantic subcategorizations in linguistics, I will further divide Objective into Living versus Non-Living,
Living into Animate versus Inanimate, and Animate into Human versus Faunal. The distinctive features I have in mind are,
respectively, life (complex biological organism), feeling (including but not being limited to neuro-muscular capability), and
intellection (including the "higher" emotions as distinct from mere feeling; see Savan 1981 for a thorough treatment of Peirce's
semeiotic theory of emotion). The anthropocentrism of these distinctions does not disconcert me, nor has scientific inquiry
seriously threatened these boundaries (so far). New scientific data on plants, animals, and humans appear to uncover ambiguities
exactly where the hierarchy predicts they would be: on the boundaries between categories which are contiguous in the model.
New data may therefore have the effect of adjusting the "rights of membership" of a given organism to a given category, but not
(yet) the existence or the hierarchical arrangement of the categories themselves.
The Human/Faunal distinction, for instance, has been under attack for centuries, as have (more sporadically) the Human//Plant
distinction, and much less frequently the Human///Object distinction. The model thus predicts where and

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how often the attacks will come: where the "walls are thinnest" (/, //, /// indicating width). Moreover, the distinctions have so far
stood up rather well to these attacks (which, not incidentally, have produced some fruitful scientific and poetic investigations of
the effects which obtain by crossing these boundaries; the "brute Secondness" of the boundaries in no way precludes the cross-
predicative function of Thirdness, which is precisely the fact of evolutionary growthliterally organic or figurally semanticfrom
one category to another). I say that the boundaries have stood up well to attacks (or to crossings) because they persist in our
thought and culture despite our changing conceptions of individual objects within them. Of course, some "habits" of thought or
culture have no ontological ground; as I have already noted in chapter 5, we typically reserve many predicates for the Human
category alone, by linguistic or cultural convention alone: for instance, denying Fauna the literal rights of "comfort."
Nevertheless, the defining predicates of Human intellection and language seem to be grounded in something more than
convention alone. At least I am not among those who talk to their house plants, nor do I think I will ever "hear'' an ape "talk"
freely and creatively to me, via spoken words, American Sign Language, or computer push-buttons. This is not meant as
hostility towards that fascinating study of animal semeiosis; quite to the contrary, the hierarchy suggests precisely where the
most productive investigations of such ought to take place: with animals whose brain/body ratios, social characteristics, or other
features are correctly perceived as closest to the Human. It is clear that animals use signs to communicate; but I, for one, am not
yet convinced that animal semeiosis really approaches linguistic semeiosis (epitomized, by the way, in creative poetic metaphor)
in its capacity for growth. Perhaps I will be proved wrong in this; perhaps someday soon I will be forced to "hear" some ape use
"language." As a matter of fact, I rather hope such an opportunity may come. But if and when that day does come, I would not
expect to abandon the Human/Faunal distinction; I would expect only to be much more careful about when and where I call the
animal in question an "ape," as he might not appreciate that.
We can now put together the entire hierarchical framework as shown in figure 6.3.
The right branches of the tree in figure 6.3 might also be bifurcated (or trifurcated, and so on) to accommodate the finer
distinctions relevant to many metaphors, but that is not to my purpose here. First, note that any further division of a given right
branch would only delineate the semantic territory along the branch immediately to its left, exclusive of the nodes immediately
to its left. For instance, if we further divide Amorphous phenomena into liquids, gases, and so forth, these would only constitute
refinements of the rather large domain (that is, the branch) between Inertial and Objective; no matter how many different kinds
of amorphous substances we name, they are bounded by the no-

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Figure 6.3
tion of mass (Inertial) at one extreme, and by the concept of shape (Objective) at the other: they must all be more or less
shapeless masses. Since my purpose is to capture only the broad outlines of this 'metaphor map," I will forego these finer
distinctions.
There is a second and more interesting reason for attending to the bifurcation of only the left branches: They lead ultimately to
the Human. Since the purpose of the model is to explore the relationship of human semeiosis (poetic

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metaphor in particular) to the larger semeiotic, the left branches provide the channel in which to trace the connection we are
looking for; as Robert Weimann (1974: 149-150) put it, 'that poetic statement by which man . . . imaginatively comprehends his
relation to time and space and, above all, to the world around him." I would add only that the 'world around" the human also of
course includes the human. The 'imaginative comprehension" of that world (one peculiar type of Thirdness which intermediates
the categories of brute Secondness at the lower reaches of the hierarchy in discoveries of the Firstness at the top) is only
possible because of human membership in the major categories of Being. Thus tracing only the left-branching path in the
hierarchy puts the poet at 'center stage," as it were, without granting human semeiosis an inordinate importance in the universal
semeiotic: Human intellection is here depicted as but a token, a tiny circle at the center of a vast circumscribing Reality.
Of course it is entirely possible that the delineation of the enclosing categories of this Reality is itself but the figment of the
human imagination, that it is an imposition on Reality of that peculiarly human habit of classification, and that the classifications
themselves are hopelessly flawed by human egocentricism. I will not debate this possibility; since I believe that it is not
debatable without undermining the very instrument of debate (human intellection), I will simply admit the possibility and then
cheerfully ignore it. And I would invite those readers for whom this "possibility" seems more of a likelihood to ignore it, too,
for the time being, and to consider the model as one hypothesis that might, at least, turn out to have some basis in objective
reality. While Peirce might not have accepted this particular model of classification, he said that 'it is a shallow and sciolistic
metaphysics which declares a 'real class' . . . to be an impossible thing" (CP 1.204). In view of my own notions of possibility
(chapter 3), it is therefore enough for me if my readers will consider this hypothesis at least as one version of a "positive"
possibility, motivated by the study of metaphor.
In any event, as I have tried to show elsewhere with a similar but flawed model (1975), something like this hierarchy does have
a degree of psychological reality for many speakers of English. The test of such reality I currently have in mind is to see how
well the model formalizes our natural sense of higher or lower levels of semantic tension in various metaphors and metaphor-
like expressions. That is, how well does the hierarchy explain sensed increases in figural displacement as a function of
increasing distances between semantic categories crossed by various metaphors, or as a function of the increasing number of
type boundaries so crossed? Consider the paradigm in figure 6.4.

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1. a finger trembles
2. a leaf trembles
3. a diamond trembles
4. vapor trembles
5. light trembles
6. a point trembles
7. an idea trembles
Figure 6.4
Test your sense of figural displacement against mine. For me, as the nouns 1-7 (finger, leaf, diamond,...) are sequentially
combined with the predicate "trembles," there is a (near) sequential increase in semantic tension. A trembling finger is entirely
literal, showing no indexical tension. This would be accounted for in the diagram of figure 6.4 by the hypothesis that a finger
belongs to the same general semantic class [ + Animate], or the domain on the plus side of that boundary, to which the predicate
"tremble" also belongs. A trembling leaf, conversely, possesses for me a very slight metaphorical tension, which the diagram
accounts for by placing the leaf on the [-] side of the Animate boundary; thus "a leaf trembles" crosses a single boundary in the
hierarchy (though in the case of "leaf trembles," the boundary may have been nearly erased). In the case of a trembling diamond,
the tension is increased to a factor of at least two because two boundaries are crossed by that predication, and so forth through
the rest of the combinations of a trembling vapor (three boundaries), a trembling light (four boundaries), a trembling point (five
boundaries), and a trembling idea (six boundaries).
As much as possible, I have tried to keep other factors equal. All boundary

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crossings are from right to left, or down, in the hierarchy. However, I should note that "a point trembles" and "an idea trembles"
cross conceptual boundaries (as discussed in chapter 5), whereas all the other predications cross merely existential boundaries.
There is no reason why, in some possible world, leaves, diamonds, vapors, or even light might not actually or conceivably
possess organic animation; but in no possible world of (my) imagining is it literally conceivable that a thing might at once be
Static (points) or Abstract (ideas) and yet at the same time exhibit any kind of literal Motion (trembling). This variation in my
paradigm at figure 6.4 is therefore unavoidable in the case of points and ideas; it is impossible to think of any noun example
belonging to these categories, which by definition are non-Motive and non-Actual, that might be combined with "trembles"
without crossing conceptual boundaries. Since the crossing of conceptual boundaries produces higher tension than the crossing
of merely existential boundaries, this predication of points and ideas produces a higher level of tension than may be predicted
from the mere number of boundaries crossed. Clearly, though, the number of boundaries crossed appears to be one factor which
determines the level of semantic tension.
Next, note that the hierarchy also formalizes figural tension as a function of the direction of boundary crossing(s). All of the
crossings in figure 6.4 are down in the hierarchy; we can also predicate up. Consider figure 6.5.
Semantic Domain Noun Examples General Predicates Hyponymic Predicates
(Metaphysical)
Potential circularity is real is perfect
(Actual)
Stative a point is here or there is on a graph
(Motive)
Energial light moves flashes
(Inertial)
Amorphous water pushes, resists swirls
(Objective)
Non-Living a rock breaks, collides crumbles
(Living)
Inanimate a tree lives, grows, flourishes
(Animate)
Faunal a dog feels, reacts barks
Human a man thinks speaks
Figure 6.5
Again I invite you to test intuitions with me. Figure 6.5 presents, for each sub-Being domain in the hierarchy, examples of
nouns, general predicates, and hyponymic predicates belonging to each domain. (By a "hyponymic" predicate

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I mean a peculiar concrete token of the "general" predicate type, as for example crumbles is a very specific mode of the more
general "breaking.") You may select from the chart in figure 6.5 any noun example for combination with any general or
hyponymic predicate in order to test for varying degrees of tension. I believe that the figural tension will vary (partially)
depending on whether we combine a noun with a predicate higher or lower than the noun's own level in the hierarchy.
First, consider the case of the noun-to-general-predicate combinations. Note that predication up produces no tension at all. For
instance, all the general predicates above man are literally predicable of a man. Someone may object that "a man breaks" is
figural, and when we mean a man's "spirit" or "emotional stability" as prescinded from the man, I agree that it is figural; that,
however, would be predication down. When we consider the man's physical being, his body (which is part of what is implied in
this case by placing the man beneath the encompassing category of Objective), then the predication "a man breaks" can be
entirely literal, as when the man's body is broken. This condition of literalness in the up predications is no surprise when we
remember the hierarchical arrangement of the semantic domains in the model: A noun referent's membership in one category
automatically includes it in all directline higher categories, whereby it is literally predicable of all general predicates which span
those categories.
Conversely, note that all predications down between nouns and general predicates produce moderate-to-high tension. I may be
understood (believed or disagreed with) literally if I say that "circularity is real"; but if I say that circularity is here or there, that
it moves, pushes, resists, breaks, lives, feels, or thinks, I may only be understood figuratively. Notice that the further down we
predicate a given noun of the general predicates, the more the tension increases. This is a result of the other factors already
discussedthe kind and number of boundaries crossed. The further down we predicate, the greater the number of intermediating
domains we cross; and in the case of the highest domains in the hierarchy, predication down crosses conceptual boundaries in
addition to existential boundaries. For instance, "Circularity pushes" crosses down over three boundariesStative > Energial >
Inertial; these are all conceptual boundaries with respect to circularity, since in no possible world could something be an
abstraction (which is by definition not physical) and at the same time possess a physical position, movement, or mass.
Conversely, "light pushes" crosses down over only one boundary, Inertial; this is only an existential boundary with respect to
light, since it is obvious from light science that the "particle theory" of light is at least conceivable. Light is not (by definition)
necessarily immaterial in all accounts of it; it is only immaterial in ordinary experience.
Thus we may summarize the noun-to-general-predicate conditions as follows:

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Noun (referent) > up > General Predicate = no tension
Noun (referent) > down > General Predicate = moderate-to-high tension
The case of the hyponymic predicates is more interesting, however. Here, predication up apparently goes against the model's
prediction by creating at least a low level of tension. For instance, while "a man['s body] breaks" produces no figural index, the
hyponymic parallel of "a man['s body] crumbles" does seem to produce a slight strangeness, even when the breaking apart of the
man's body is meant. This is probably the result of two factors: one, purely arbitrary, perhaps existential, constraints habitually
placed upon hyponymic predicates; and, two, the lower level of generality among the hyponymic predicates. With reference to
the first of these factors, note that crumbles is reserved not just for Objective noun referents in general but specifically for nouns
whose objects are more usually "dry" or "brittle"; thus to say that ''the man crumbled into dust"-even when the physical
destruction of his body is meant-seems figural (the crossing of an existential boundary). In a more specific context, a context
which is itself "hyponymic," this figural sense disappears; that is, supposing that the man had first been literally calcified
(remember Lot's wife) or frozen, the sentence would not sound figural at all. Apparently, then, crossing a given noun with a
hyponymic predicate spanned by a higher general predicate does provoke a figural response unless the context is also highly
specialized. This notion accords with the second factor above-the specificity of the hyponymic predicates. This specificity
entails that any predication up to a hyponymic predicate also must involve a slight predication back down, as shown in figure
6.6.
Figure 6.6
Therefore, when hyponyms are viewed in this way (as slightly lower predicates within the span of a general predicate) their
tension-causing behavior is completely consistent with the model: Predication up to a general type produces no tension; but
predication back down to a lower token of the general type would

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(predictably) produce slight tension. In any case, predication up to a hyponymic predicate seldom produces more than low
tension, whereas predication DOWN to a hyponymic token uniformly produces extremely high tensioneven higher than
predication down to a general predicate (contrast 'circularity breaks' with "circularity crumbles").
The indexical patterns of predication to hyponymic verbs may thus be summarized:
Noun (referent) > up > Hyponymic Predicate = low tension
Noun (referent) > down > Hyponymic Predicate = high tension
These trends of tension accord with those produced by the general predicates to suggest that the hierarchical direction of
predication is indeed one factor (among three) regulating semantic indexation in metaphor-like expressions.
The same general patterns obtain in the case of metaphors in the form of "Noun X is Noun Y" (where X and Y are in separate
domains of the hierarchy). That is, when two nouns are "general" of their respective domains, predication up produces no
appreciable tension ("A man is an object"), whereas predication down produces moderate-to-high tension ("Actuality is
something brute"). When the two nouns are hyponymic tokens of their general types, predication up produces low tension (''John
is an absolute garbage disposal"), whereas predication down produces extremely high tension ("Relativity is a ping-pong ball").
The same patterns could be redundantly demonstrated for adjectival and adverbial or prepositional predications in metaphor, as
well as for nouns in direct, indirect, or prepositional object positions in the syntax of the sentence. In every case, it would seem,
the hierarchical logic of "up-predication" is an allowing condition for the imaginative exercise of 'down-predication." Perhaps a
computer programmed with extensive lexicons in each of the categories could be used to "generate" an interesting catalogue of
potential metaphors.
That exercise does not interest me, however, because the tension or semantic novelty of poetic metaphor is its secondary
indexical function, not its primary substance. To say that figural tension is an index, however, is not to minimize its importance.
If we use this model hierarchy to draw a "map" of homocentric semantic boundaries and domains (see van Dijk 1975), we can
'chart" the major figural displacements of complex metaphor and gain a deeper appreciation of how semantic novelty both marks
and conditions the evolution of iconic meaning in poetry. In figure 6.7, I have constructed the sort of "map" I have in mind and
charted on it a number of the metaphors and metaphor-like expressions which we have already considered.
Since my objective is to formalize an overall sense of what figural displace-

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Figure 6.7
ment means for poetic metaphor, I will not attempt a detailed defense of my placement of the icons and objects in figure 6.7.
The extreme breadth of the categories allows room for plenty of variance of opinion as to where this or that object should be
placed in the hierarchy. Instead of arguing these points, I will

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simply predict that most serious disagreements will focus on a choice between two contiguous categories and will not therefore
significantly affect the overall perceived direction of a given figural displacement.
When used to chart the indexical function of such displacement, the "metaphor map" suggests some interesting observations.
First, notice that what I have called "false metaphor"mere anomalies such as "an idea trembles" (or ''colorless green ideas
sleep") or "triangularity barks"effect radical leaps across semantic space without "touching down" anywhere in the process.
Conversely, poetic metaphors, such as "stars are diamonds trembling" or "syllabic nets of frost," look somewhat different on the
map: While these metaphors also effect radical displacements, they tend to do so in more subtle stages, or at least to "fill in the
gaps" with icons that serve a mediating indexical function. The direction of the poetic metaphoric complex therefore appears to
be more uniform, sensible, even teleological, serving a helpful indexical function for the nonpoet reader. Of course, much
modern (especially surrealistic) metaphor is a clear exception to this rule, as we will see at the end of this chapter, and it must
also be remembered that the anomalies can be interpreted as metaphors in appropriate contexts. Now, however, we have a way
of understanding precisely what "rescuing context" does for anomaly: it supplies a secondary similarity condition which fills in
the anomaly's "gaps" in semantic space with invented intermediary steps. Conversely, poetic metaphor generally fills in its own
gaps; the intermediating similarity condition is its Firstness, the natural outgrowth of one icon into another; the "leap" to that
condition, coming Second and occurring in organic stages, actualizes the similarity in a way that makes it more accessible (not
merely allowable) to consciousness.
Nowhere is the interplay of metaphor's indexical function with respect to its iconic condition clearer than in the Keats metaphors
charted on the map in figure 6.7. Consider the figural displacement of stars > diamonds > trembling. First, diamonds form an
intermediating icon between the light of the stars and the trembling of some animate organism. Without this intermediation, we
would have great difficulty guessing that stars are the literal object; more important, we would miss that very interesting
similarity condition which links the cosmic energy of the stars with the energy of animate life (the diamonds fill the gap in
semantic space). Looked at on the map, however, there is even more: What does the overall direction (the index) of this iconic
displacement mean to the similarity condition? To answer this question plainly (albeit metaphorically), it almost puts the stars in
human hands. Trembling is closer to Human in semantic space than are sparkling diamonds; the sparkling of diamonds, in turn,
is closer to the Human than is the pure primal energy of stars. Keats's metaphor displaces the cosmic phenomenon of starlight
into the local object of a diamond, and thence into life and animation, only one step from the Human. Considered

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as a whole, the trope not only supposes how stars are like diamonds; with trembling it makes that star-diamond likeness more
like us. Plotted on the metaphor map, then, the direction of the index gives the complex icon a salient psychological force, if not
also a distinctive semeiotic substance.
Why, someone may ask, do I not accord complex anomalies like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" the same honor? Partly
it is because its (hypothetical) index, if plotted on the model hierarchy of type boundaries, would appear irregular, lacking
rational direction; it would point in every direction and therefore in no direction. Partly it is because of the lack of a clear icon;
there is no primary substance (and in context, only a secondary substance) for the index to color and configure; there is no
interpretation to undergo re-interpretation. But in the Keats metaphor, there is a clear Focus Interpretation of Firstness, even out
of the poem's immediate context; there is thus a semantic substance for Vehicle Interpretation to act upon. When Vehicle
Interpretation is carried out with a "map" in hand, a map of the territory in which the Vehicle moves, we can see how the
Vehicle does more than "carry" its object; it also shapes it, or at least reshapes our understanding of it. To put it in Peircean
terms, the index more than indicates a string of icons; in the case of poetic metaphor, it actually "makes an assertion'' (like the
arrow of a weather vane, NEM 4: 242) about the metaphor as a whole, whereby the index becomes something of an icon in
itself, an Icon greater than its mere sum of icons, signifying man's relation to the cosmos.
In Keats, this iconic force acquired by the overall indexical 'arrow" is not always pointing inward on the map, as if everything in
the universe were only important as it points to the Human. True, that pattern of figural displacement typifies Keats' early
period. (That pattern also seems to typify the early period of an infant's cognition, as well as the general tenor of the geocentric
theory which dominated astronomy in its infancy.) Keats's later metaphors point outward as well as inward, interpreting cosmic
experience in human terms at the same time as it re-interprets human experience in cosmic terms. (See Ronald Lunsford 1980
for a similar treatment of Byron and Shelley.) The result of this simultaneous inward and outward displacement is a special kind
of semantic tension in itself, a kind of semeiotic force and opposition with which the figural index acquires a "double-arrowed"
iconic significance. This significance, in turn, allows the whole metaphoreven when it consists entirely of images and
diagramsto approach the universal power of the metaicon (chapters 2 and 4). Consider, one final time, the complex metaphor
discussed in chapter 5 (Endymion, I, 453-456):
O Magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of
mind

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Till it is hushed and smooth! O unconfined
Restraint! imprisoned liberty!
You may wish to refer again to figure 6.7 above, where I have plotted the individual and overall figural displacements of Keats's
metaphor on the map.
First, let us examine the parallel displacements of Magic sleep > comfortable bird and mind > sea. Linguistically, the
predication of both tropes is downward or inward: The quasi-abstractions of sleep and mind acquire the motion, substance,
shape, life, and animation (with human proximation) in the concrete imagery of the bird at sea. However, the literal experience
being captured in the metaphor is that of the human mind in sleep; "Magic" and "the mind," while lexically abstract, are
referential tokens of the human span of predicates. In this respect, then, the figural displacement is outward from the narrow
domain of human experience to the broader and more remote domains of the bird (Animate) hovering over the sea (Inertial).
This displacement outward reinforces the sense of spatial sublimity implied by the image of a bird at sea (and a huge halcyon, at
that, if it ''broods" over the ocean).
What is more, the linguistic countermotion (concrete < abstract) merely adds to the semeiotic outward motion (Human >
Animate > Inertial), for the next displacementoutward againis now into the circling kinesthetic force and opposition (Energial
versus Stative) of the paradox unconfined restraint, and then outward yet again into the radical oxymoron imprisoned liberty
(Stative versus Abstract). Here, then, is an even more vivid way of formalizing the sense (discussed in chapter 5) of how these
oxymora properly and dramatically culminate the entire figure. What the oxymora speak of is force and counterforce held in
equilibrium; what they are is a linguistic paradox containing an abstract unity; where they come in the metaphorical complex is
at the end of an indexical movement beginning in lexical condensation and ending in semeiotic expansion, the simultaneous
culmination and release of mounting figural tensionan Index which is in itself an unconscious Icon of sleep.
On the metaphor map, this complex metaphor looks something like a "cosmic funnel," pointing inward but opening outward.
The map even allows us to plot, as if "flowing outward" though this funnel, some possible free associations (the dotted lines on
the map in figure 6.7) which reinforce the overall outward predicative motion: "bird > sea > unconfined > liberty," and so forth.
Note also that, within the oxymora themselves, such free associations also duplicate the circling displacement of the explicit
predications, as shown in figure 6.8 (where dotted lines show free associations and solid lines show explicit predications).

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Energial Stative Potential
Figure 6.8
This mirror-image balance of the associative and predicative functions, combined with the linguistic/semeiotic motion and
countermotion already noted, gives the whole figure a complex symmetry very nearly approximating (at the indexical level) that
of a metaicon. I do not think that the associations of "birdliberty" or "sea-freedom" are in themselves metaicons; I rather think
the sense of symmetry in this metaphor obtains from Keats's complex indexical patterning.
Specifically, I think that it is Keats's overall indexical pattern that subliminally implies the (clear) metaicon of
ascent (or voyage) in space = quest for being (or truth)
which perhaps fosters and controls the bird-liberty and sea-freedom connections. Now note that Keats does not explicitly
mention either space, an ascent or voyage, a quest, or being or truth. There is no particular object or icon in the complex which
instantiates anything like "voyage ¬ quest(ion)." Rather, it is the indexical pattern itself which implies it. We build up to the
abstract reconstitution of sleep as imprisoned liberty because the metaphor leads us stepwise through these successively more
expansive semantic domains:
human > faunal > energial > stative > potential
Thus, while Keats does not mention space or a quest, his metaphor's upward and outward pattern of displacement does remind
me of the words of Arthur Lovejoy (1936: 139): "The poet takes an imaginary voyage through space and at the same time
conceives of this as an ascent of the Scale of Being." I believe Lovejoy was discussing what I have called the metaicon of
"ascent in space =

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quest for being." Lovejoy does not mention, however, that this congruence is reversible. In the Keats metaphor, we have
evidence that the congruence is indeed reversible. For here, instead of presenting a voyage in space as an icon of ascending the
chain of Being, Keats does precisely the reverse: He presents an ascent of the chain of Being as a latent icon for a voyage or
flight to spatial sublimity, to a Potentiality beyond space. The fact that this iconic voyage only emerges as the overall indexical
pattern of microscopic iconic movements within a complex metaphor only confirms the correspondence between the growth of
the poetic "molecule" and the structure of a universal semeiotic suggested by the metaphysics of C. S. Peirce.
Of course, someone ought to notice that, in the Keats example, I have chosen a complex metaphor which is unfairly supportive
of my intent-it is unrepresentative of much poetic metaphor. I must admit to this charge; the model works best with the kind of
poetic metaphor that very nearly disappeared from Western literature at the end of the nineteenth century. The Medieval,
Renaissance, Eighteenth Century, Romantic, and Victorian world views all were much more compatible with the rather obvious
Ptolemaic and Platonic character of the model I am proposing. Conversely, in much twentieth-century poetic metaphor, what we
see is the virtual disintegration, not the orderly ontogenetic recapitulation, of this "semantic macrocosm." Consider a final
example, this passage from Eliot's The Waste Land (lines 367-385):
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
Passages like this, while densely and brilliantly metaphorical, defy any effort to reconstruct an indexical sequence of figural
displacement to accommodate the

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hypothetical structure of a logical and hierarchical semeiotic universe. Joseph Frank, in his interesting book, The Widening Gyre
(1963: 56), writes that modern poets in general tend to 'undermine the inherent consecutiveness of language, frustrating the
reader's normal expectations of a sequence and forcing him to perceive the elements of the poem as juxtaposed in space." This
captures precisely my sense of what happens in "semantic space" when poets such as Eliot disrupt the "inherent
consecutiveness" of semantic domains suggested by an ontological/semeiotic hierarchy like the one I have put forward. Without
attempting to show in detail what Eliot's metaphorical structure would look like if charted on the metaphor map, I will merely
sample some of the near havoc to which the second stanza above reduces the map's prediction of an orderly sequence. See
figure 6.9.
[Human] [Animate] ... [objective]... [Energial] [static] [Abstract]
Figure 6.9
With only poetry of this kind to read, no one would ever suppose that complex poetic metaphor instantiates an orderly hierarchy
of semantic domains. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" would seem friendly in comparison to the model. Remembering
that Eliot's purpose was to describe a "Waste Land," however, perhaps we can see the utility of such a metaphor map even here.
Reconstructible from pre-twentieth-century poetry and thought, the model hierarchy formalizes precisely how twentieth-century
surrealism (Eliot's term

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here was Unreal) differs from almost everything that came before it in our literary and artistic tradition. And perhaps the
violence done to the hierarchies of Peirce's philosophical realism by such instances of surrealism may even suggest a cause for
modern poetic "dissonance" or "ontological shock." The non-sequential character of the modern (surrealistic) poetic index is
itself a dramatic icon of the rational world view in collapse. In his book Space against Time in Modern Poetry (1972: 28), M. K.
Spears must have had something of this sort in mind when he wrote that "abandonment of poetic form is intended as an emblem
of abandonment of belief in cosmic formthat is, any principle of order and meaning in the universe.'' I would add only one
footnote to this fine statement of the case. If Eliot's Waste Land metaphors together form an "emblem," a complex icon, of
modern semeiotic and ontological disorientation in the Einsteinian universe, they only acquire that force by virtue of the
cumulative chaos in their overall indexical pattern. The pattern of that chaos is only measurable in terms of a supervening order,
a universal order like that to be found in Peirce's semeiotic. Although I confess to the hope that poetry will return (I think it is
already returning) to the sort of iconic/indexical patterns which gently harmonize with that order, I nevertheless find in much
modern poetic dissonance a tacit confirmation of the idea of order and harmony.
Perhaps out of this "chaos" will arise an entirely new order. Peirce's Thirdnessnot limited to the Secondness of gross binary
opposition, which is virtually all I have treated in this chapterwould be the least likely of all notions to hold us back from new
orders of meaning. Thirdness means change. But I hope, at least, that Peirce was correct in thinking that change ultimately
means growth, and that growth means Law. Evolutionary law operates as a general teleology upon fortuitous variation (which is
sometimes brought in by violent mutation). If modern science and poetry have shaken the old order of ontological realism to its
very foundations, perhaps modern scientists and poets will build a new foundation from the solid stones of the fallen walls. If
so, metaphoras a movement to the unknown from the knownwill no doubt be the mortar in the seams.

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VII.
METAPHORIC GROWTH
Sparshott (1974: 84) writes, "A language is nothing but a necropolis of dead metaphors." The more we examine the growth of
languages, the less hyperbolic this statement appears to be; the lexicon of a language, at least, is grounded to a significant extent
upon buried (if not dead) metaphor.
Consider the semantic evolution of the word scruple as a case in point (see O.E.D. 2685). The process of unearthing the word's
metaphoric skeleton also turns up a host of other figural relics. Apparently, the early referent of scruple's Latin "ancestor" was
something like "a small sharp stone"perhaps of the sort that might get into your shoe and annoy you, but not usually enough to
make you stop, pull off your shoe in public, and shake the little stone out. Now, in American English, the primary referent of
scruple is "a reluctance or hesitation on grounds of conscience." This evolution from the little rock to the idea of morality is no
random change; rather, it strikes me as a rather teleological change, for it has a certain wit about it: The small sharp stone is
metaphorically the cause for moral halting or hesitation. Despite the fact that scruple's quaint history has dropped out of
common knowledge, once we are reminded of it, we take conscious pleasure (or displeasure) in finding the worrisome little
pebble still there, for a moral scruple is not a major cornerstone of our ethical foundation; it is simply a small pebble of
conscience that we seldom think about until it turns up under foot to pang us if we tread upon it. The metaphorizing of scruple is
an instance of a kind of poetry buried deep in the nature of ordinary language and semeiosis. Even dead metaphor fertilizes
semantic growthof language, of poetry, of thought.
The very large number of examples of this kind, however, should not be taken as evidence for the false notion that ordinary
language or even metaphor is all there is to poetry. Throughout this study I have emphasized the differences between ordinary
and poetic metaphor, which itself of course is not the whole of poetry, though it is clearly central to it. On the other hand, I have
also tried to show that the differences between ordinary and poetic metaphor are differences in the use and degree, not in the
kind, of linguistic or semeiotic competence.
To be sure, such differences are vitally important. One difference seems to

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involve a contrast in the amount of time required for the growth of metaphorical meaning to emerge. That is, the poets among us
are those who are able to achieve, in an instant of time, the sort of convincing and natural "leap" which might take centuries for
the ordinary evolution of language to effect. Scruple may have changed in one such leap to a new meaning, which immediately
became fashionable, but probably it did not. More likely it changed in stages which, considered individually, appear to form a
loose chain of drift, broadening metonymic association, and minor extension, as Henle (1958: 188) has pointed out in the case of
the word cosmos:
lady's headdress > horse's harness > army ranks > [order]
> universe
(early sense) (current sense)
This evolution is strikingly parallel to the iconic movements of at least one kind of complex poetic metaphor we have examined.
The evolution of cosmos, however, took centuries; poetic metaphor leaps across those centuries, transcending linguistic time,
accelerating the process by which word meaningalong with the world view delineated by word meaningis convincingly made
and remade. Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that very often in poetic metaphor, the "ontogeny" of meaning "recapitulates
the phylogeny" of language.
If my hypothesis in chapter 6 is correctthat both the ontogeny of a poetic molecule and the phylogeny of language are but
discoveries, in one way or another, of a semeiotic macrocosm like the one I have sketched from the leading suggestions of
Peircethen the evolution of the word cosmos itself would make good sense:
lady's headdress > horse's harness > army ranks > [order] > universe
[Human] [Animate] [Stative] [Potential Being]
While it is unnecessary to accept these particular designations of the category distinctions, such examples (and they are legion)
suggest that there must be an overarching and relatively stable hierarchy of broad semeiotic domains which fosters and guides
(or at least marks the inherent logic of) many new meanings. It is not enough to say, with Bloomfield, that "refined and abstract
meanings largely grow out of more concrete meanings" (1933: 429-430). It is not enough because, as Bloomfield also said, that
much is obvious from the mere "surface study of semantic change." It is not enough becausein examples like the evolution of
cosmos, where any given intermediate stage may seem an accidental mutation or free associative hybridthe sequence of palpable
categories which emerges over time suggests an internal logic not accounted for by simply noting the abstract result.
Additionally, it is not enough because the growth of meaning is often in the reverse order (from abstract to concrete) as we have
already seen in the case of the metaicon in poetry (some further comments to follow

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here). What makes us feel that a case of semantic change constitutes "growth" is not the particular result in a given case of
change, but the "certain general character" of such changes, in Peirce's words (CP 1.211, emphasis added). The evolution of
metaphorical meaning is teleological, I believe, because of the very orderliness and goal-directedness of the process of change
itself. While the particular "goal" may be abstraction in individual cases of metaphorical extension, in cases of metaphorical
narrowing (as when new diagrams or images are generated from a metaicon), the particular ''goal" is concretion. Thus the
"certain general character" of the goal in metaphoric growth can be thought of as the emergence of a general system (in the
literature and in the language) by which meanings can be either extended or narrowed metaphorically, to contextual and
cognitive advantage.
Now the importance of metaphor in semantic growth has often been noted (see especially Anttila 1972: 142 and 1977: 18, where
he ranks metaphor as "our chief means to expand our use of language"). The next step in metaphor study, I believe, ought to be
the development of a meta-theory of semeiotic/linguistic phyla and evolution, which would do for semantics and poetics what
Darwin's Origin of Species has done for biology. The grossly oversimplified taxonomy of alleged "natural kinds" and the
primitive cross-predicative functions of "natural selection' which I have proposed in this (mainly synchronic) study will probably
not answer the need for such a meta-theory. Nevertheless, if such a theory is possible at all, I am convinced that the makings of
it are to be found in the semeiotic of C. S. Peirce. (In this connection, see Rauch 1984, especially page 19.)
In passages mentioned previously (CP 2.222, 2.290n, 7.590), Peirce noted the helpfulness, the plenitude, and the creative power
of metaphor in the generation and new application of symbols both in language and in logic. Despite his early antipathy to
figurative language as noted in chapter 2, his definitions for words in The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889) and in his
materials for a 'Dictionary of Logic" (1867, MS 145) sometimes offer illustrations or etymologies showing a keen appreciation
for metaphor in the growth and function of language (see especially his definition of analogy and related terms in The Century
Dictionary, CB 373: 195, and his appeal to "the original metaphor" of the verb to abstract, W 2: 116). Still, it seems obvious
that metaphor as such occupies only a modest, if not negligible, position in the Peircean semeiotic.
This is not to say, however, that the Peircean semeiotic must in turn be limited to a modest role in the study of metaphor,
including the function of metaphor in the general growth of language. On the contrary, I believe that a thorough application of
Peirce's semeiotic to metaphor will ultimately lead to a much deeper recognition of the crucial role played by metaphor in the
evolution not only of language but of all thought and culture. To take one step in that direc-

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tion, I will explore in this final chapter one further extension from Peirce's seminal description of metaphor in the hypoicon
passage (CP 2.277, first discussed in chapter 2).
Specifically, I will offer that Peirce's placement and treatment of metaphor along with the image and diagram suggest (perhaps
beyond his intent) a potential developmental sequence in the evolution of the Icon. This sequence of development in the Icon
begins in imagery and tends toward pure metaphoricity (which I have termed the metaiconic type), via asymmetrical
diagrammatic extension upward. "Pure metaphoricity" can thus be viewed as a final cause in iconic evolution, a natural principle
of selection that determines which images and diagrams will survive their immediate contextual uses. Once this metaiconic type
reaches its full entelechy, it then becomes an efficient cause, a formal law by which an endless progeny of fresh (and reliably
symmetrical) diagrams and images are generated, not just in poetry but throughout the sign system.
Proving this hypothesis is beyond my scope here. But if the hypothesis can be demonstrated as feasible at least, it would suggest
a much more important role for metaphoricity in the birth and growth of symbols than might have been previously thought. That
is, while any metaphor might be the immediate origin (or new extension) of a symbol (CP 2.222), the principle of pure
metaphoricity itself, as archetypal Icon, might be the prototypical Symbol. The archetypal metaphor of poetry, then, might be
seen as an approach to a first principle of language, and the actualization of this principle in poetry would be perhaps the
greatest debt owed by a language to its creative literary tradition.
First, though, let us see if the hypothesis is feasible. What it amounts to is an application of Michael Shapiro's reading
(following Short 1980; 1981a and b; 1982; 1983) of Peircean final versus efficient causation in semeiosis. Shapiro's most
focussed development is given in his "Teleology, Semeiosis, and Linguistic Change" (1985b) where he applies the theory of
Peircean causation to examples of teleological development in Russian phonology and morphology. Elsewhere, he applies a
similar scheme to the evolution of orthographic signs, marks, and diacritics (1985a), and to other topics in connection with
Edward Sapir's notion of "drift" (1987). To Shapiro and to Short (and naturally to Peirce), then, I am indebted for this
theoretical approach, though of course none of these men is responsible if this application of it does not work.
Shapiro's explication of Peircean causation in "Teleology, Semeiosis, and Linguistic Change," as it relates to the feasibility of
my application, involves the following crucial points: one, Peirce follows Aristotle in explicitly dissociating final causes from
conscious purposes; two, final causes are present (or antecedent) but not mere possibilities; three, final causes are general types,
or principles of selection; four, final causes operate in language through a tendency towards diagrammatization; five, the
entelechy of final causation is the establishment of

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formal laws which then operate as efficient causes. In the rest of this chapter, I will take these points up in order.
First, Shapiro calls the notion that a final cause is a conscious purpose "one of the most damaging misconstruals of teleology,"
for it is this notion which attributes "wanting" to inanimate objects. Shapiro points out that it is "absurd to imagine genes or
languages wanting or purposing anything" (1985b: 2). Although for Peirce "a symbol is essentially a purpose" (NEM 4: 261),
Shapiro notes, "Peirce does not thereby intend to restrict his own understanding of final causes to purposes'' (10), because Peirce
explicitly states that "a purpose is merely that form of a final cause which is most familiar to our experience" (CP 1.21 1).
How does this point apply to the question of feasibility in my hypothesis? What it does is to dissociate the alleged "drift" of
metaphorical extension, its tendency toward the ideal of pure metaphoricity, from the conscious purpose of the poet or of the
linguistic community. The actual innovations or extensions in the usage of the word cosmos, for instance, might have been
effected for any of a number of conscious purposesmany of which might have been at variance with what emerges over time as
the resultor for no conscious purposes at all (if the new usages were mistakes); what is important is that just those innovations
survived which make the (alleged) overarching semantic structure more explicit. Perhaps this is a tautology, but one which
nonetheless serves as an explanation: The multiplicity of examples such as cosmos or scruple exhibit a pattern so striking that it
would be "too improbably coincidental if there were no final causes that explained them," to borrow Short's words applied to a
different topic (1981a: 369). Similarly, in the case of that sort of "instantaneous leap" made by a poetic metaphor (if I am right
that it achieves in a moment what often happens only in centuries of drift), there is no need to suppose a conscious purpose on
the part of the poet to produce an indexical pattern of innovations anything like what I claim to be the emergent metaiconic
force and direction of such metaphors. My claim may be wrong, but it is not infeasible in this regard, for it simply makes no
claim as to conscious purpose in proposing a final causation in such patterns.
Moreover, Shapiro's and Short's reading of Peircean causationin subordinating conscious (human) purpose to a master
patternactually increases the feasibility of my proposal, I think. Specifically, it encourages an application to the phenomenon of
metaphor. Shapiro writes:
Holding, as he did, that matter is "effete mind", Peirce is consistent in describing his concept of teleology as
anthropomorphic: "Rationality is being governed by final causes" (2.66); "psychicality [consists] in being under the
governance of psychical, i.e., of final causes" (1.253); "the mind works by final causation" (1.250). But the mental, for
Peirce, is continuous with types of teleological process other than those found in the human mind. Peirce can thus speak
of the behavior

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of microorganisms, biological evolution, and even the growth of crystals as exhibiting mentality. This does not mean that
there is something occult called "mind" animating inorganic processes such as crystal formation; rather that there are
processes constituting human mentality that are also to be found in simpler form elsewhere throughout nature. (1985b: 13)
This certainly fits my reading of the Peircean "metaphor" as metaicon. As we have already seen (chapters 2 and 4), reciprocal
symmetry is what distinguishes a host of archetypal metaphors such as Man-Symbol (including human-tonatural-symbols),
Mind-Space, Voyage-Quest(ion), and so on. I suspect that all metaphorical (poetic and religious) personifications, even
asymmetrical ones, are attempts at the metaiconic truth of Peirce's objective idealism. In other words, I think such metaphors are
motivated, not just because of literary habit, but because I think Peirce was absolutely correct in subordinating human habit and
feeling to a master type of Universal Reasonableness which finds yet another token of itself in physical nature. It is this that
makes the lawfulness of nature (and yes, its fortuitous heterogeneity as well) an icon for all forms of human life and rationality
(and vice versa). This conception is also clearly provided for in the "master hierarchy" of chapter 6, which depicts human
experience as the tiniest (perhaps most concentrated) domain at the center of a vast circumscribing sphere of Metaphysical
Being.
This aspect of the model I am proposing encourages one additional speculation (and I emphasize that it is only a speculation).
Specifically, I think it suggests a way to envision what is meant by the "growth of consciousness" in evolution. In figure 7.1, I
present my own personal notion as to the literal scope of the predicate "mind" as plotted on the ''metaphor map." Please test my
no-

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tion against your own. (The scope of mind as I conceive it is shown in the shaded area of the graph.) In other words, my present
concept of "mind" as a predicate reaches its "highest" (most literally appropriate) points at the categories of Human and
Metaphysical, its lowest at the categories of Inertial and Objective. Perhaps this is nothing more than a graph of my personal
intellectual history. (For Peirce, there may have been no 'curve" in the graph at all.) I would guess, however, on the basis of
psycholinguistic experiments I conducted with Ronald Lunsford (see Haley 1975), that this graph might be fairly typical of at
least many Western conceptions of the universe. Furtherand this is the important notionI would speculate that, if this is roughly
the Western view, it was not always thus. That is, I would guess that Western culture, and probably many cultures, began with
literal conceptions of Mind and Being more like that illustrated in figure 7.2.
Figure 7.2
Roughly, this would represent a conception of the universe which was literally and utterly anthropomorphic, a world view in
which there was no indexical "otherness"in the mind of manbetween his own mind and nature's. It would thus have been a world
view in which metaphor, as such, was impossible (indeed, it is doubtful that even the other categories above Human in the
model would have existed per se in the human mind at such a stage). I also suspect that such a view of the world is rather
typical of young children today; they cannot imagine that anything in nature would go against their Wishes and feelings and
thoughts. Under such a conception, there would be a dawning "awareness" (as we see among lower animals), but there would be
no consciousness; for consciousness, as psychologist Julian Jaynes has put it (1976: 75), is awareness

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of awarenessthe ability not only to think, but to think about thinking. Shapiro also writes, "The sort of higher order of self-
control that distinguishes human beings comes about as the result of man's ability to subject even the principle of self-correction
itself to (further) correction" (1985b: 13).
If my speculation of early anthropomorphism in culture is correct, the kind of "self-correction" I think Shapiro is talking about
might have begun with some act of indexical differentiation (probably between the Human and Animate in the model). This
would have led to a world view which might be characterized as the next stage in the growth of consciousness: namely,
Animism (as opposed to anthropomorphism). What is most important for this study, however, is the fact that this event would
have been precisely the intellectual development in human history which first made metaphor possible, for now we would have
that important interactive "otherness" by which similarity (as opposed to a mere confusion of identity) is made potent and actual
to the consciousness. In other words, the growth of consciousness in human evolution must have been inextricably bound up
with the development of metaphor. Perhaps some fortuitous speech act of metaphorical indexation in human semeiosis was even
what occasioned or facilitated this growth.
If we take Peirce's trichotomy of hypoicons as a developmental sequence (image > diagram > metaphor), this speculation would
make good sense. That is, I would guess that the earliest iconic thoughts of man were pure imagery, a near total lack of
differentiation between icon and object (thus the condition of "collapse" between mentality and objective reality). Growth
beyond this stage must have occurred in the direction of diagrammatization. But as we have seen, metaphorical diagrams are
characteristically asymmetrical (usually concrete-toabstract). Thus, the asymmetry of the first diagrammatic leap upward
towards metaphoricity might have been precisely what first actualized indexical differentiation in the human mind. For my
purposes, we might just as well suppose the reverse: Perhaps some event which at first "alienated" the human mind from nature
is what made possible the first asymmetrical diagrammatic icon; that event (to the degree to which it was guided by the final
cause of some metaiconic type) would have led, in turn, to the achievement of pure metaphoricityan achievement by which the
human "alienation" from nature's objectivity would have begun to be resolved, if not relaxed, into a condition of harmonious and
balanced separateness (an isomorphism between mind and nature).
I hope it is not too presumptuous of me to suggest that the "parabola" shape in my graph of the "mind"-predicate in figure 7.1
depicts just such a condition of isomorphic harmony and balance between human reason and nature: The two arms of the
parabola provide for the mind-to-nature isomorphism; the nose of the parabola provides for the important indexical point of
balance. On the

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other hand, perhaps my parabola shows only a stage in my growth of consciousness, as I am sure some of my friends in the
university would be quick to suggest. That is, they would point out that my "parabola" in figure 7.1 differs from the curve of
figure 7.2 (literal anthropomorphism) by the relative expansion of the "mind" scope at the bottom of the parabola figure as
compared to a decrease in its scope midway in the graph. And they would predict that, when I come to intellectual maturity, I
will draw a graph with all the mind space down at the bottom, in the Human category where it belongs. I hope that they would
be wrong in that prediction, for if they are rightif man really is the measure of all thingsthen metaphor as such (at least as I now
conceive it) would once again become impossible. If everything is metaphor, metaphor is nothing.
But I will leave these speculations, now, to return to Shapiro's important second and third points: Final causes, in the Peircean
(and Aristotelian) sense, are present but not mere possibilities; they are general types which tend to emerge. Shapiro writes:
Traditional antipathy to teleology stems in part from the received idea that it is antiscientific obscurantism. How could the
future influence the present? In this form, teleology sounds like occultism. But as the careful exposition of Peirce's
concept of final cause has made clear, teleology is rather the doctrine of the potency of present possibilities. There is
nothing mysterious or occult in this once it is coupled with the idea that types bring about results of a general kind.
(1985b: 27)
I have already presented (in chapters 2 and 4) my best arguments for considering Peirce's hypoiconic "metaphor" as a
metaiconic type. In chapter 3, I have detailed a doctrine of metaphorical possibility, based loosely on Peirce's notions, which
seeks to make the antecedence of possibility (before its discovery in poetic metaphor) seem feasible, and so I will not belabor
those issues here. What remains for me to do now is to make a few suggestions about how these notions regarding metaphor
might help to define its role in diachronic linguistic (and broader semeiotic) growth.
First, in what sense can the evolution of words like cosmos and scruple be considered "growth" as opposed to random change?
As already indicated, it cannot be the mere fact that such change often tends toward abstract senses. There is nothing "better"
about an abstract sense per se (now that cosmos refers to the whole universe, its meaning is not "better" than when it referred
only to a lady's headdress); indeed, Shapiro points out that Peirce departs from Aristotle on this point: unlike Aristotle, Peirce
does not attribute the potency of final causation to its "goodness" (1985b: 12). But then, in what sense might evolution towards
a general type represent ''growth"? If we call it that, we must mean that the outcome or result of such change represents
"progress" of some sort towards a

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goal, even if the goal is not "goodness" per se. Perhaps we might define growth as the acquisition of increasing complexity, as
in biological evolution. I think that comes close to the mark. But when we consider the evolution of meaning in words like
cosmos and scruple, the abstract or general meanings they have attained are not necessarily more "complex" than their original
meanings. True, these broader and more general senses are parallel to greater complexity in human mental development, but in a
very important sense (especially where metaphor is concerned) these general senses in themselves are actually simpler or less
complex than their original meanings. Even if we could appropriately consider these abstract meanings as "final outcomes" in
themselves (which we cannot reliably do, of course, as they are almost certain to change again), these "outcomes'' would not
necessarily be more complex in every way of looking at them.
The question of "growth," at this point, narrows itself to the question of what the "final outcome" really is. It is not the
generality of a word's meaning all by itself which constitutes the outcome; it is rather the fact that this generality impliesand has
been attained through the crystallization ofcontinuity in the sign system. Peirce wrote:
Looking upon the course of logic as a whole we see that it proceeds from the question to the answerfrom the vague to the
definite. And so likewise all evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. The indeterminate future
becomes the irrevocable past. In Spencer's phrase the undifferentiated differentiates itself. The homogenous puts on
heterogeneity. However it may be in special cases, then, we must suppose that as a rule the continuum has been derived
from a more general continuum, a continuum of higher generality. (CP 6.191)
What a pompous view it would be to think that we, as human beings, were the "goal" of biological evolution! The goal of
evolution is the proliferation of species (the heterogeneity of nature), because it is only under that condition that the homogeneity
of nature manifests itself clearly as Signa Sign of a still greater continuum of higher generality yet, of a whole that calls out its
parts (CP 1.220).
Similarly, we have nothing to congratulate ourselves about when we consider, by themselves, the abstract meanings to which
words like cosmos and scruple have evolved. Indeed, it is only when we observe where these meanings came from, and the
stages though which they passed (helping, as they did so, to differentiate those stages), that we get a sense of the real growth or
progress involved. The goal towards which this progress tends is a general type, but it is not the general type of a particular
meaning in itself; it is rather the the general typology of meaning whose emergence is made definite by the growth of particular
types. I am not so presumptuous as to think that the semantic hierarchy I have proposed represents the final or ultimate state of
such a typology; but I believe

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that this model, or something like it, broadly describes the present state of our semeiotic progress towards the goal of that
typology. And I believe that metaphor (in its degenerate imaginal and analogical forms) is the principal vehicle of that progress,
just as surely as I believe that the principle of metaphoricity itself (in its purest form) is at least part of the goal. For it is the
metaphorical index that is forever forcing us to understand and appreciate the proliferation of semantic species; and it is the
metaphorical icon which is forever encouraging us towards the discovery of the ultimate homogeneity in nature, as well as
between nature and our minds.
Consider how this notion of metaphorical teleology might be roughly recapitulated on the smaller scale of a child's linguistic
acquisition. As Julia Falk has noted (1978: 324-325), many investigators of children's acquisition of word meaning have
observed that early definitions tend to be overly specific; then, in the next stage, children tend to overgeneralize a word's
meaning, applying it inappropriately to referents not included in the adult usage of that word; finally, the children "narrow
down" the definition to the proper adult usage. Falk illustrates this principle with some interesting samples she collected from
the speech of her own daughter, Tanya. At seventeen months of age, Tanya used the word [dus] (her pronunciation of "juice") to
mean, in her mother's translation, 'only fruit juice given in highchair." (Presumably, the same fruit juice in a different context
was not [dus] at all.) Then, at eighteen months, Tanya was using [dus] to mean "any liquid." (Tanya must have had [dus] falling
from the sky when it rains, or being put into the car's gas tank when it was empty! Falk does not say so, but I think we are safe
in assuming that Tanya finally got juice narrowed down to something like "a fluid naturally contained in plant or animal tissue,''
probably before she stopped pronouncing it [dus].)
In one way of looking at this, of course, the telos of childhood word acquisition is the adult usage. But in another senseone
recommended to me by my interest in metaphorthe adult usage of a given word is not itself the real teleological outcome of this
sort of growth at all. Rather, I think the true "goal" of such development is the acquisition of a semantic framework, a semeiotic
typology of wordreferential and hierarchical classes which will allow the child to learn an ever-increasing multitude of new
word meanings and to remember them without specific contextual cues. What to me is even more important about such a
typology, however, is that it will provide the child a frameworkone which she can use throughout her lifeto make and
understand metaphor. In other words, I predict that the first time Tanya hears someone use "juice" in context to mean
'electricity" (if she does not happen to say it first herself), she will know what is meant. At the very least, because of her own
vital experimentation with word meaning during early childhood, she will already have (unconsciously) in mind the categories
of meaning and experience necessary to

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interpret juice metaphorically in this way. And in the best case, she will understand that this metaphor tells the truth in a deeper
sense than the idiomatic or contextual sensenamely, the sense in which the organic origin of juice really is but a token of its
membership in a more general type of energy which spans electricity as well.
Thus I do not see that children's "overgeneralization" in semantics (and the same thing occurs in phonology and syntax) is
'inappropriate" in the least. In relation to adult norms, of course, these childlike experimentations with language are bound to
produce "mistakes," but ones that I believe are highly fortuitous. We must learn the keyboard before we can make the music. If
nothing else, this process of starting too low and then reaching too high gives the child exercise in what may come close to
being a first principle of all language and semeiosisasymmetrical diagrammatic extension from the known to the new. While
analogy is the "syntax" of this remarkable transformation, I believe, its controlling 'deep structure" is the hope (though not the
conscious purpose) of metaphoricity.
This brings me to Shapiro's fourth crucial point: Final causes operate in language through a tendency towards
diagrammatization. He shows explicitly how this occurs in phonology and morphology (1983, 1985b) and elsewhere in
orthography and drift (1985a, 1987). In what I believe is a brilliant seminal insight, he also suggests a way of extending his
notions to the iconization of all sorts of symbolic activity:
( . . . if B and Y are symbolized by A and X, respectively, then the relation < BY > tends to be diagrammed by the
relation < AX >, so that < AX > is the icon of < BY >, though A is not an icon of B nor X of Y).
Why? One might speculate: there is a telos beyond diagrammatization. The telos of language is to express, and
diagrammatization contributes to the clarity and efficiency of expression. The opacity of language becomes a
transparency. Words show us their objects in their own characters. Whereas there is a movement in linguistic change away
from one form of thisonomatopoeiathere is a counter movement toward it in a more profound sensediagramming relations.
That the latter is more profound is indicated by the tendency of modern thought from Galileo to Peirce to Whitehead to
make relations the primary reality and relata secondary. The telos of linguistic change that is beyond and accounts for
diagrammatization might be something a la Heidegger, i.e., the revealing of being. (1985b: 26)
My own reading of the Peircean hypoicons would accord with this exactly. Beginning in chapter 2, I have hypothesized a
continuum of iconicity, the simplest form of which is the image. Even in metaphor, this requires only the "low-level" perception
of sensory likeness. The diagram, however, is more challenging to the mind, especially in metaphor, for it requires the more
abstract understanding of how relations may be related, rather than single objects. It is

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more profound, I think, because it encourages thinking not only in relationships but also about relationships. Because the
similarity of the diagram is actualized in a clearly dyadic form (whereas the image is nearly monadic), I believe diagrammatic
thought must have been the breakthrough which crystallized the differentiation of semantic levels in language and
consciousness. And so I fully agree that final causation shows itself as a tendency towards diagrammaticality.
What interests me most about Shapiro's statement, however, is his suggestion of a telos beyond diagrammatization. Note that
Shapiro gives two suggestions (not mutually exclusive) as to what that telos might be: one, the clarity and efficiency of
expression; and two, the revelation of being.
This is precisely what I have said about the two kinds of "motivation" for metaphor of the analogical sort (and thus redundantly
of the imaginal sort, albeit to a lesser degree). That is, I have suggested that some metaphorical diagrams are merely rhetorical
or expressive, while others (those that belong to a metaiconic type) are revelatory or prophetic. For my purposes, then, I am
most interested in Shapiro's second possibility for a telos beyond diagrammatization. It is just here that I think my hypothesis of
Peirce's hypoicon trichotomy as a developmental sequence in the evolution of iconicity becomes most feasible. If there is
sometimes a telos beyond diagrammatization (besides efficiency of expression), why not think of it as given by [image >
diagram > metaphor] (with "metaphor" as "metaicon")? This would explain, at least, why some metaphors (and perhaps some
iconic signs of all sorts) tend to outlive the immediate rhetorical applications to which they are put and to remain continually
productive of new discoveries about "being."
One natural objection to thinking of the hypoicon trichotomy in this way is the fact that (apparently) neither Shapiro nor Peirce
thought of it in this way. For Shapiro (1983: 185), the Peircean metaphor is actually a sub-species of the diagram, as it is based
on 'parallelism" in Peirce's description (CP 2.777). My own view is that Shapiro is right in this respecttwo things which are
parallel at the diagrammatic level are not (qualitatively) "more parallel" at the metaphorical level. I am simply venturing an
additional guess that diagrams which are purely dyadic (not grounded in a third metaiconic type) have a lower life expectancy;
they serve the cause of expressive efficiency, but no final cause in metaphorical teleology. Still, it is clear that the 'logic" of
even a metaiconic relation reaches its most objectifiable "syntactic" form at the level of the diagram (the metaicon, because of its
vagueness, needs its multitude of diagrams precisely for their logical rigor). Indeed, it seems clear (from his usual treatments)
that if any icon had "typical" or "prototypical'' status for Peirce, it was the diagram. For instance, he wrote: "A concept is the
living influence upon us of a diagram, or icon, with whose several parts are connected in thought an equal number of feelings or
ideas. The law of mind is that feelings and ideas

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attach themselves in thought so as to form systems" (CP 7.467). Similarly, the "revelatory" or 'prophetic" power which I want to
attribute to the metaicon, Peirce seemed ready to grant any icon (CP 2.279; 4.530; CB 296: 182; CB 1128: 492-493).
Here, however, an important caution arises: Icons, in themselves, give only one kind of assurance of truth: "Namely, that which
is displayed before the mind's gaze,the Form of the Icon, which is also its object, must be logically possible" (CP 4.531,
emphasis CSP's). Icons reveal 'hidden truths" about their objects (which might be "pure fictions") precisely by making us aware
of possibilities which we had not considered before, or which may not even have been actualized. Now as we have already seen,
there are different sorts of possibilities. As Shapiro shows, the greater potency of some possibilities is fundamental to Peirce's
notion of final causation in teleology. If there is a teleology in the development of iconicity, then it must be that certain iconic
possibilities are more potent than others. That is all I wish to claim for metaiconic possibility: It is the final type of iconic
potentiality towards which all diagrams and images (except those motivated only by the need for expressive efficiency) tend to
gravitate.
But why, then, did Peirce have the habit of treating the diagram itself as somehow the most representative icon? Borrowing
Shapiro's argument about the relation of final causes and conscious purposes, I would suggest that Peirce, even if he did treat the
icon as "essentially" a diagram, did not thereby limit the notion of iconicity to the level of the diagram. That is, the diagram was
simply that form of the icon which was most familiar to him in his studies. His primary use of icons was in connection with his
system of existential graphs. These are clearly diagrams (although an interesting future inquiry might be to consider whether his
system of existential graphs could be viewed as belonging, ultimately, to some kind of metaphorical typology that Peirce himself
had not consciously worked out). In other words, Peirce was most interested in the logical "syntax" of iconicity, and that is
diagrammaticality. On the other hand, in the course of this study we have seen that Peirce often appealedin some of his most
profound passagesto something beyond "mere'' verbal analogy. And, as I have argued in chapter 2, I believe the hypoicon
passage itself is enough to suggest that Peirce at least provided for the possibility of an iconicity beyond diagrammaticality; if
so, however, it is a possibility that cannot do without diagrammaticality.
Other passages also suggest that Peirce provided for a developmental sequence of iconicity in linguistic evolution. He wrote:
Rudimentary languages, when men first began to talk together, must have largely consisted either in directly imitative
words, or in conventional names which they attached to pictures. The Egyptian language is ... , as far as we know, the

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earliest to be written; and the writing is all in pictures. Some of these pictures came to stand for sounds, letters and
syllables. But others stand directly for ideas. They are not nouns; they are not verbs; they are just pictorial ideas. (MS
404: 7)
Note that this description suggests a sequence: First come pictures (pictograms, or drawings of objects; these would correspond
to images in Peirce's hypoicons). Next, these pictures come to stand for sounds, letters, and syllables. What Peirce was referring
to here is called the rebus principle in linguistics, a process by which pictograms, for instance, come to have phonological value
in writing systems which begin as pictographic. I believe this must occur by several sorts of diagrammatic extension from
pictograms.
Here is how the rebus works: Suppose, for instance, that you begin with a pictographic drawing like ¬ to represent an eye. For
efficiency of expression, you might next come to represent it as ¬. Already, you see, the sign has come to be grounded less on
pure imaginal resemblance and more on diagrammatic proportion: it is less a "picture" and more a "map" of an eye. But then,
for even greater efficiency of expression, you might start using ¬ to represent the first-person pronoun "I," not because the
drawing looks like, or even maps the physical outline of, the first-person referent (at least we hope not), but because your
pronunciation of "eye" sounds like your pronunciation of "I.'' For even greater efficiency yet, you could begin to use ¬ to
represent any sound belonging to the phoneme /ay/. Thus, the whole process would have begun in imagery and moved through
several stages of increasingly asymmetrical diagrammatic extension. For efficiency of expression, the rebus completes its cycle
by using (originally) pictographic signs to diagram phonological relations.
Is the rebus diagram motivated by anything besides efficiency of expression? It is interesting to speculate. Bolinger and Sears
(1981: 286) describe an interesting example of the rebus:
Hans Jensen in his Sign, Symbol, and Script tells how the Yorubas of West Africa developed rebus messages using
material objects. Cowrie shells were used as tallies-six of them stood for the number six, for which the Yoruba word is
efa. But efa also meant "be attracted to," and a boy would send six cowries to a girl to say "I love you." To return his
love, she might send eight cowries-the word for eight was ejo, which was also a form of the verb jo, "to be in
agreement"-"I love you too."
In such ways the rebus principle allows not only for efficiency but for a certain revealing cleverness and semantic richness in
diagrammatic relations. The above example seems to involve the following analogy:
six cowries / eight cowries :: I love you / I love you too
Here, numerical relations (tallies), reinforced by the rebus, are used to

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diagram amatory relations. In this particular case, then, we might want to say that the diagram is well on its way towards
metaphor in its indexation of semantic species. But with regard only to the iconic factor, is there perhaps a glimpse, here, of a
metaiconperhaps something like multitude ¬ fervency? At the very least, the girl's response of eight cowries seems to be a
delightfully revealing and creative metaphor of the analogical sort: It seems almost to say, "I herewith return your six cowries .
.. and two more."
But what of the third level of orthography provided for in Peirce's description of Egyptian writing, the use of pictures to
represent ideas? These are called ideograms in linguistics, and they are highly metaphorical. Fromkin and Rodman (1983: 143)
write:
In the course of time the pictogram's meaning was extended, in that the picture represented not only the original object but
attributes of that object, or concepts associated with it. Thus, a picture of the sun could represent "warmth," "heat,"
"light," or "daytime.'' Pictograms thus began to represent ideas rather than objects, and such pictograms are called
ideograms ("idea pictures" or "idea writing").
The example Fromkin and Rodman give here suggests that metonymic association played a part in what ultimately emerges as
metaphorical similarity. This accords with Shapiro and Shapiro (1976: 21, note schema C), Eco (1979: chapter 2), and Factor
(1984: 29-33). Peirce also explains how the mere association of experiences in human thought leads ultimately to higher orders
of inference by similarity (CP 7.451-456). As I read these facts, they suggest that association in experience (say, of the sun with
"warmth") may be a "force" or efficient cause, in the growth of that form of consciousness whose telos or final cause would be
metaphoricity. Other examples Fromkin and Rodman offerfor instance, the one in which the picture of a star also meant God
(145)even more clearly show the emerging metaphorical character of such ideograms. In fact, ideograms are often formed by
combining simple pictograms (Bolinger and Sears give examples, 1981: 286-287). The metaphorical/poetic character of Chinese
ideograms was so potent for Ezra Pound that he said they "couldn't help being and staying poetic in a way that a column of
English type might very well not stay poetic" (1934: 22).
It is also interesting that by the time pictograms develop into ideograms, they are highly abstract and conventionalized in their
drawn forms. Their users may be completely unaware of the ideogram's pictographic origins (that is, the ideograms might have
become "dead metaphors"). In the case of Egyptian hieroglyphics, for instance, the very elaborate pictures from the early period
later came to be replaced, in everyday usage, with much more simplified and stylized forms that are clearly symbolic, rather
than overtly iconic, in their mode of representation. Even more interesting, the elaborately drawn early forms

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nevertheless continued to be usedonly in religious inscriptions (Akmajian et al. 1985: 375-378). Perhaps the priests were trying
(consciously or not) to keep the "mystery" of the ideographic metaphors alive by maintaining a strong iconic content in the
symbolic forms.
This brings me now to what I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, namely, that the principle of metaphoricity itself,
viewed as the final cause of iconic teleology, might in turn be the prototypical Symbol. Recall that every "sufficiently complete"
symbol must involve an index, just as every sufficiently complete index must involve an icon (CP 2.295; NEM 4: 256). If the
Icon is the primal "core" of the Symbol (as we have just seen in the case of some orthographic symbols), and if metaphoricity is
the telos of the Icon, then metaphoricity would have precisely a prototypical role in Symbol formation and growth.
Further, recall that Peirce said: "Every symbol is, in its origin, either an image of the idea signified, or a reminiscence of some
individual occurrence, person or thing, connected with its meaning, or is a metaphor" (CP 2.222). On the surface, this would
seem to allow that metaphor is only one of three possible origins for a symbol, and in the case of a particular verbal metaphor,
say, becoming directly lexicalized, it is of course only one of threethe other two being the image and the memory. But if we
take this "image" here to be the first stage in a developmental sequence of image > diagram > metaphor, then metaphoras the
final cause of imaginal evolutionwould account for two of the three possible origins for symbolicity. (This would be to predict
that images most likely to survive to become conventional symbols tend to be those which are "called out" by a metaiconic
type.) That would leave only the memory, or "reminiscence,'' as an alternative to metaphor in the birth of symbols. But if we
think of this 'memory" as the kind of "association" from which (if it ultimately results in symbolization) the higher orders of
"similarity" emerge, then metaphoricity would be bound up with all three origins of the symbol.
Peirce elsewhere gave a supporting example of how a "memory" might serve as the germ of a symbol's meaning, specifically the
meaning of the word natural, as in natural class:
Every class has its definition, which is an idea; but it is not every class where the existence, that is, the occurrence in the
universe of its members, is due to the active causality of the defining idea of the class. That circumstance makes the
epithet natural particularly appropriate to the class. The word natura evidently must originally have meant birth; although
even in the oldest Latin it seldom bears that meaning. There is, however, a certain sub-conscious memory of that meaning
in many phrases [in which] . . . there is the idea of a springing forth, or a more vegetable-like production, without so
much reference to a progenitor. ... But nature is an inheritance. (CP 1.214, emphasis added)

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It seems clear enough that Peirce's appeal, here, to "sub-conscious memory" in discussing the origin of the word nature's
meaning involves the explication of a striking metaphorical etymology. Perhaps it is only an analogy bred out of association; in
that case, being also a "memory," it would nicely fit the niche (as does the diagram among hypoicons) between ''image" and
"metaphor" in Peirce's delineation of symbolic origins. In any case, as a diagram comparing a "natural class" with a thing
undergoing "live birth," it certainly recalls Peirce's "great analogy" discussed in chapter 2 (W 1: 497-498), an analogy which I
believe is grounded in a metaiconic type.
Thus the three origins of every symbolthe image, the metaphor, and even the memorycan all be related, in one way or another,
with the notion of metaphoricity. Of course I am not implying that every individual symbol is in fact born in some particular act
immediately identifiable as metaphor; that could easily be refuted by our inventing some arbitrary symbol on the spot and then
agreeing to use it to mean such and such. I intend only to suggest that metaphor, in its purest form, as a final cause of iconicity,
is the natural prototypical ideal for symbolic origins. Thus, I would suppose, unless we are consciously trying to invent an
"arbitrary" symbol (and perhaps even then), we might tend to find a sign whose iconic content is ultimately grounded in some
metaiconic type. At least, if the symbol we "invent" catches on and grows in the language and culture, we shall have been given
some evidence that the "image" or "memory" or "metaphor" we have drawn upon in the symbol-making was by no means
private or idiosyncratic, but that it had a broader grounding in the shared significs of human culture. Finally, to the extent that
this symbol in turn becomes
Figure 7.3

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a powerful culturally determining sign, we shall have been given some evidence that the sign's final causation was indeed
metaiconicand with that would come a reminder that human semeiosis is but a token of the universal semeiotic. What I have in
mind is illustrated in figure 7.3. It is meant to hypothesize two distinct but interlocked developmental sequences: Icon > Index >
Symbol and Image > Diagram > Metaphor (as metaicon). More precisely, it speculates that at least those actual symbols which
begin as icons are prefigured in their scope and power by varying potentials within the icon itself. Or, the growth of symbols
from icons is provided for by a parallel potency for growth nascent in the icon (as image, diagram, or metaicon). What I have in
mind might be compared again to biological development: The Symbol is the cell of all conscious thought; the Icon is
(prototypically) its nucleus; inside this nucleus would be written, from the beginning, the genetic code of the symbol's cellular
growth and development. Hence, the actual organic development of such a symbol would be a recapitulation, at the macro-level
of Sign, of a parallel genetic hierarchy at the micro-level of Icon. Metaphor, in this view, would be more than a single "gene" in
the nucleus; the principle of metaphoricity itself would become the "DNA" of the most powerful symbols.
This hypothesis would suggest the following predictions about the kinds and degrees of iconicity in signs:
1. As the iconic content approaches simple imagery, the Sign/Object relation becomes more overtly Iconic.
2. As the iconic content approaches diagrammaticality, the Sign/Object relation becomes more overtly Indexical.
3. As the iconic content approaches metaphoricity, the Sign/Object relation becomes more overtly Symbolic.
These predictions seem to accord with many facts already observed. In the case of orthographic signs, it is of course easiest to
see the iconic ground among those which are overtly pictographic. As such signs lose their elaborate imaginal details,
maintaining only the broad outlines of shape, their iconic grounding (as more abstract diagrams) tends to become more loosely
associational; thus their iconic function begins to require more assistance, at the Sign/Object level, from purely Indexical
connections such as temporal or spatial contiguity; in other words, unless the diagrammatic sign is proximate to its object, its
iconicity might not even be interpretable. Perhaps more important, the associational breadth of the diagram (as we have seen)
leads to new semantic (including iconic) applications. The iconic evolution from image to diagramactualized in the sign relation
as a shift from overtly iconic resemblance to looser indexical associationimplies growth towards pure symbolicity. And, not
surprisingly, once the pictogram becomes a highly conventionalized symbolic ideogram, with

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its original iconic content being almost entirely covert, then that iconic content nevertheless acquires new and exceedingly
powerful metaphoric scope.
Before looking at how this might work in verbal signs, I would like to offer one more example from pictography. In my classes,
I sometimes draw the male symbol ¬ on the board and ask the students to explain not what it means but how it means. A few
students will know that this sign has evolved from a picture of the shield and spear of Mars. Never once have I given this little
exercise, however, without many students saying that the "arrow" on the circle of the male sign is a reference to the male
phallus. Are they wrong? I think not. The arrow may not have been consciously intended to have that reference, but it does
now-and not only because it is so in the minds of many interpreters. I think it is rather a case of a sign which originally
appeared as a pictographic (imaginal) icon acquiring quite a proper and predictable metaphoric scope in the process of becoming
a symbolic ideogram. I would even speculate that this metaphorical potency was there from the beginning, not in the spear-
image itself of war-like Mars, but in a persistent metaiconic typology controlling a multitude of metaphorical diagrams and
images relating weaponry in one way or another to maleness (as marked historically for assertiveness or perhaps, anatomically,
for "insertiveness"). We may wish to say that these are cultural attitudes or associations, and I do not object to that; I simply
wish to suggest that the cultural attitudes or associations are not unmotivated.
This brings me now to the final point I wish to borrow from Shapiro: The entelechy of final causation is the establishment of
formal laws which then operate as efficient causes. Shapiro writes of a teleological pattern in Russian inflection (1985b: 18):
Before it became the norm and while still in statu nascendi, the pattern had the power of final causation: in Peirce's
words, it was "that kind of causation whereby the whole calls out its parts" ([CP] 1.220; emphasis added). But once the
period of testing was over and the new inflection had established itself as the canon, conformity to the pattern ceased to be
governed by final causation in the way it had theretofore. Once it became automatic, a matter of "habit" in Peirce's sense,
the rules of Russian inflection (i.e., the set of norms comprising the latter) became "a simple formal law, a law of efficient
causation" (6.101). In other words, every instantiation subsequent to the codification of the new system conforms to
Peirce's definition of efficient causation as "that kind of causation whereby the parts compose the whole" (1.220; emphasis
added).
I am suggesting the same thing about metaphor in the growth of symbols: Metaiconicity is at first a nascent archetypal pattern
which serves as a final cause of iconic growth. It is deeply embedded, perhaps, in the collective unconsciousness of humanity or
of a particular culture-but that, I believe, is because human culture tends to be isomorphic with the universe. In any case, once
the metaicon is actualized (through the emergent plenitude of its iconic tokens both in nature

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and in language), it then becomes a formal law of efficient causation in the culture, directly stimulating further growth (via
further application of the metaicon) throughout the sign system. We have already seen how this happens in the case of
archetypal metaphors in poetry, which actually suggest fresh diagrams and images. What I am now suggesting is that this is by
no means limited to poetry. That is, if the hypothesis of figure 7.3 is correct, Icons achieve the most powerful Symbolicity as
metaphoricity emerges within the iconic function itself. It is natural to expect fresh metaphorical extensions or applications from
all symbols, especially those which have evolved from icons; but those which have evolved from icons having metaiconic
potential become the most creative and culturally provocative symbols. I think this is precisely what we have just observed in
the case of how my students tend to interpret the "spear" of the male symbol.
But how would this pattern show itself in word growth? Returning to the three predictions from the hypothesis of figure 7.3,
several possibilities occur to me. First, it is of course easiest to see the iconic ground of words like buzz in which the iconic
function approaches simple onomatopoeia; in other words, as the iconicity tends toward simple imagery (sound imagery in this
case), then the Sign/Object relation becomes more overtly Iconic. This is so obvious that it is not very interesting. Being also
now a conventionalized symbol, buzz has many colloquial metaphorical extensions, but I think it is a "weak" symbol in the
sense that its iconic content is more or less bound to a sensory (though not necessarily a sound) image; that is, the icon does not
appear to be called out by any emergent metaiconic type, and so its growth potential and its innate power (not counting whatever
power it might gain from external sources) seems rather limited, at least in terms of how "culturally provocative" a symbol it
may be.
The second prediction (that as the iconic content approaches diagrammaticality, the Sign/Object relation becomes overtly
Indexical) is more interesting. We have already seen ample instances of this in poetry: Analogical metaphors, because of their
strong icon-to-object asymmetry, have a powerful indexical component (semantic tension); they thus engage the mind more
actively, suggesting more imaginative possibilities, than do most purely imaginal metaphors. But what might this prediction
imply about "ordinary" word symbols? Consider the word boy. Apparently, its ancestor meant something like "to fetter" (see
O.E.D, 260, boy sb.2). If that is in fact its origin, its original application to the object of a male child must have been
iconicspecifically, diagrammatic (perhaps young males have to be restrained as young goats have to be fettered). Now, of course,
the word has come to be a fully conventionalized symbol. There are apparently at least two consequences of this. First, in order
for the word's (covert) iconic content to become overtly active again, it requires the assistance of some noteworthy indexical
opposition with an object

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for instance, "My husband is such a boy!" Of course I am not implying that the speaker is consciously aware of the etymology,
but only that the diagrammatic logic of the etymology is re-emergent in this indexical situation. Had the highest possible level of
the word's original iconic ground been imaginal, it would probably not require such indexation in order to be re-activated.
But the second consequence of boy's growth from diagrammatic icon to conventional symbol is more important: Boy seems to
be a rather powerful symbol, suggesting many significant metaphorical extensions and having great cultural ramifications. For
instance, in America it is highly provocative and insulting to call a black male "boy," even if the person happens to be a young
male. No doubt this symbolic power reverts, most immediately, to a historical fact of the culturewhite slave owners referred to
all black male servants as "boys." But again, the cultural condition is not unmotivated: Why was boy the choice here? Because it
was a way of reminding the black man of his shackles, the same diagrammatic "logic" by which all young males originally got
"fettered." One example is not enough to prove the prediction, but it does suggest the feasibility of supposing that the scope and
range of a symbol is at least partly conditioned by the level of iconicity nascent in its origin: Symbols of diagrammatic iconic
origin require pointed indexical assistance for the icon to re-emerge; but once this happens, the symbol fosters additional
metaphorical extensions and strong indexical associations of a social and cultural nature.
Consider how the same principle (or a corollary) might work in the case of a demonstrative pronoun like that. This symbol is of
course predominantly indexicalit requires spatial or temporal proximity to its object in order to indicate it. What iconic content
does its meaning have? Disregarding its etymology, consider only how it is interpreted in context. I think the interpretation
requires something like the construction of a mental diagram. In written text, for instance, that refers to something antecedent on
the page (rarely to a cataphoric referent). The spatial relationship on the page diagrams a relationship between ideas in the
reader's mind. Also, when that and this are opposed to each other in context, the low-to-high vowel opposition (reinforced by
the front-to-back opposition of those and these) seems to work as a phonological diagram of a spatio-temporal opposition: far-
to-near. This is nothing new, of course, but I think it gives additional credence to the notion that the predominating level in the
Sign/Object relation of a symbol (in this case, Indexical) is systematically related to the level of iconicity at which it is
interpretable (in this case, diagrammatic). The secondness in the Sign is paralleled by the secondness of its Icon.
Finally, what of the third predictionthat as a sign's iconic content approaches pure metaphoricity, the Sign/Object relation
becomes more overtly (and powerfully) Symbolic?

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It is too tempting not to use the word symbol itself as an example: Etymologically, it involves 'throwing together" things which
"conform in likeness" (O.E.D. 3208), although of course the primary meaning which has now emerged is of "Something that
stands for, represents, or denotes something else (not by exact resemblance, but by vague suggestion)" (O.E.D. 3206). This
meaning seems consonant with Peirce's notion of the symbol, especially if the "vague suggestion" of resemblance involved with
a symbol in the O.E.D.'s definition is interpreted in the light of Peirce's Logic of Vagueness (chapter 2). That is, a symbol's
original iconic content would tend to be grounded in an ultimate possibility not limited to "exactness'' (as in the case of the
sensory image or the logical diagram), but would tend to be typologicallyand, not incidentally, teleologically"vague." This is
precisely what I mean by "metaphoricity," as prescinded from its diagrammatic and imaginal tokens. In chapter 2, I argued that
this sort of metaphoricity was also what Peirce might have meant by "metaphor as the merit of metaphysics"namely, that sort of
metaphor involving 'broad comparison on the ground of characters of a formal and highly abstract kind" (CP 7.590). (In that
same lecture, it is clearly this sort of "comparison' which serves as the predicative ground of Peirce's Man-Symbol metaicon.)
Thus the growth of the word symbol itself might have progressed from a notion of "throwing things together" by way of their
immediate "likeness" (probably in an imaginal or diagrammatic sense) to the notion of an ultimate (vague) "likeness" in things
by way of their being "thrown together" (in a metaphorical sense). The original "throwing together" must have been the
forerunner of the symbol's overt or immediate "arbitrariness," just as the original "likeness" must have been the prototype of its
covert or ultimate metaphoricity. My point is not that the word's iconic origin dictated, by way of efficient causation, the
development of its later (more powerful) conception, but that its icon survived to become a part of this powerful conception
because it belonged to the final cause of a type which was at least partly metaphoricthat of the fortuitous "thrown-togetherness"
of things ultimately but covertly alike.
Peirce seemed to recognize that "likeness" of this sort was not only important in language but was fundamental to it:
Inference from resemblance probably implies a higher degree of self-consciousness than any of the brutes possess. It
involves a somewhat steady attention to qualities as such; and this must rest on the capacity for language, if not on
language itself. Primitive man, however, reasons in this way; for mythology is built of such inferences. Our ancestors saw
something manlike in the sun, and could even tell what kind of a man the sun-god was. (CP 7.455)
Peirce's "however" in this passage about the reasoning of primitive man is intended to remind us that inference from similarity is
by no means always correct. Primitive man saw something manlike in the sun, and thus inferred that

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the sun was a god; therefore, such inferences (perhaps, more accurately, abductions) must be forever subjected to the self-
corrective scrutiny of reasonableness. As I have already suggested, I believe such self-corrective measures in human
consciousness must have arisen as differentiationthe metaphorical similarity cannot be apprehended for the truly far-reaching
and creative phenomenon it is except in the presence of conscious indexical opposition between semantic species. But once this
differentiation has been achieved, what are we left with? That is, when man began to see that the sun was not really a god, what
did he have left to believe in? The whole history of our literature, as well as Peirce's own objective idealism, answers this
question eloquently: There is something man-like in the sun, and something sun-like in man! Undifferentiated "awareness" of an
icon has evolved into the critical "consciousness" of a metaiconic symbol.
And it is so with some of the most "ordinary" but most powerful symbols in our language. Consider just the ten or so words to
which C. S. Lewis devoted his delightful book, Studies in Words (1967): Nature, Sad, Wit, Free, Sense, Simple, Conscience
(with Conscious), World, Life. Three strong impressions about these words arise from Lewis's book: one, the uniformly iconic,
and I believe metaiconic, origin and development of these words in each language is strikingly parallel to the development of
their counterparts in other languages; two, these words, though simple, have developed some of the most profound varieties of
senses of any words in any language; three, despite this proliferation of semantic variety, the original senses of these words (as
far back as we can trace them) are amazingly persistent, right down to the present day.
Consider what Lewis wrote about Nature, echoing Peirce:
Those who wish to go further back will notice that natura shares a common base with nasci (to be born); with the noun
natus (birth); with natio (not only a race or nation but the name of the birth-goddess); or even that natura itself can mean
the sexual organs-a sense formerly borne by English nature, but apparently restricted to the female. It is risky to try to
build precise semantic bridges, but there is obviously some idea of a thing's natura as its original or "innate" character.
If we look forward, the road is clear. This sense of natura, though soon to be threatened by vast semantic growths of
another origin, has shown astonishing persistence and is still as current a sense as any other for English nature. Every day
we speak about "the nature of the case" (or of the soil, the animal, the problem). (1967: 25-26)
How do we explain this proliferation of senses? the disappearance of some senses (narrowly analogical ones, like nature =
sexual organs)? or the "astonishing persistence" of the root sense? Keeping in mind Peirce's notion of a natural class as one
whose members share a common "inheritance" (CP 1.214), and his

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further designation of this heredity as a law by which "the offspring shall have a general resemblance to the parent" (CP 1.215),
the answer seems clear: The evolution of the word natura itself, with all its derivatives, is an example of the teleological
emergence of a natural class in language. It might be thought that this is true of any word's evolution, and to a certain extent this
is true, but not to the extent it is true of word families like natura. Contrast words like buzz, in which the original icon is
obvious but the proliferation of senses is rather narrowly constrained; or words like boy or scruple or cosmos, in which the
cultural ramifications are somewhat more potent than with buzz but in which the original senses are lost or radically changed.
Such words simply do not approach the innately fertile power and persistence of natura in our language and literature, as Lewis
clearly demonstrated by devoting a full thirty pages of close and careful literary exegesis to the family. This reading of Latin
natura is also supported by Lewis's exegesis of a striking parallel in the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon kind (26-42).
Here is how Peirce defined "Kind" in Baldwin's Dictionary (after criticizing Mill's distinction between "kinds" and "real kinds"):
Any class which, in addition to its defining character, has another that is of permanent interest and is common and
peculiar to its members, is destined to be conserved in that ultimate conception of the universe at which we aim, and is
accordingly to be called "real." (CB 776: 601)
If I am correct that the words natura and kind are themselves natural classes and real kinds, what "character" in them might be
of "permanent interest" and thus "destined to be conserved in that ultimate conception" of the language/universe at which we
aim? In Peirce's words, it is that original idea in their meanings and extensions of "a springing forth,'' or "birth," of general
resemblance by inheritance, which is the basis of his own symmetrical metaphor of Man as Symbol. This metaphor is a
fundamental one, I believe, not just to Peirce's conception of semeiotic, but to a prime enterprise in all language and literature-
that "commerce of icons" between man and the universe. Thus, symbols whose original icons are grounded in this sort of
metaiconic type have a perennial freshness and power which resists the "death" of those icons by lexicalization in the language
or by conventionalization in the literature.
This is not to belittle the power of words such as scruple and cosmos, nor to imply that their development is not also
teleological. But I am now perhaps in a position to make an important distinction: The evolution of words such as scruple and
cosmos plays its part in the master teleology by passing through (and thus helping to codify) a hierarchy of semantic species. On
the "metaphor map" that I have proposed, for instance, their growth can be configured as the sort of "figural displacement" we
have observed in poetry. But only a large multitude of such examples brings about the consciousness of these "stages" as

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"species." Because their displacement between stages seems immediately justified only by rather narrow imaginal or analogical
correspondences or associations between contiguous stages, each new level of growth seems to "forget" the previous level,
whereby the overall drift is lost to consciousness (until it is reconstructed from historical evidence). Conversely, in words like
nature and kind, with all of their ''organized heterogeneity" (CP 6.101), we have nearly the "whole map at once," as it were;
each new development is justified not only by imaginal or analogical connections between contiguous categories but by an
immediate offering to consciousness of the master typology itself, the archetypal hope of a continuous homogeneity and
isomorphism between mind and nature, between life and the universe.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the evolution of the words conscience and conscious (with their related forms). Lewis
pointed out the etymology in Latin: cum ("with") and scio ("I know"), hence the original meaning, "I know together with, I
share (with someone) the knowledge that" (1967: 181). The question immediately arises, Who is the "someone" with whom
knowledge is shared in "conscience" or "consciousness"? Lewis pointed out that in its earliest classical sense the sharing of
knowledge was between two or more people. The notion of conscience or consciousness as private knowledge within a person,
especially in relation to some standard of what ought and ought not to be, is a comparatively recent development in the word's
sense. This explains why Lewis noted an interesting oddity in Thomas Hobbes's use of the term:
Hobbes, in a curious passage which is perhaps not very true to the idiomatic English of his own day, gives English
conscious exactly the classical meaning of conscius: "When two or more men know of one and the same fact [i.e., deed]
they are said to be conscious of it one to another." (Leviathan I, vii, 31; Lewis 1967: 185)
In other words, by Hobbes' time conscious had already come to mean "private knowledge," so Lewis thought it strange that he
should revert to the classical sense of "shared knowledge." Further, Lewis wrote:
Jeremy Taylor makes the semantic situation unusually clear by noting the ancient meaning of conscientia--Horace's
conscire sibi-and saying that while this is correct so far as it goes it is not "full and adequate; for it only signifies
conscience as it is a witness, not as a guide". Under the name conscience we must also include "that which is called
synteresis, or the general repository of moral principles." [Ductor Dubitantium, I, i, I, para. 24]
If popular language had followed these distinctions, much confusion, and perhaps not a little bloodshed, would have been
avoided. But that is not the way of common language. It would have nothing to do with the word synteresis though it was
ready to talk abundantly about the thing. It therefore used the single word conscience, sometimes to mean the consciring
of what we have done, sometimes the Inner Lawgiver who tells us what we should or should not do, sometimes the

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inner nagger or prompter that urges us to obey the Lawgiver here and now, and sometimes other things as well. All the
senses work upon, and in and out through, one another, and often, no doubt, men did not know themselves, much less
make clear to others, exactly what they meant. (1967: 195)
What Lewis sees as "confusion" here I see rather as teleology; he is closer to the truth of it when he says that "all the senses
work upon, and in and out through, one another." Specifically, I think Taylor's erudite synteresis was not adopted in English to
name "the general repository of moral principles" precisely because conscience, from its very origin, was fully up to that task.
How so? How indeed, unless the original meaning of knowledge shared between people was a driving metaphor, perhaps in the
actual development of human consciousness as well as in the evolution of the word which names it, of that self-corrective
knowledge within people?
What I have in mind, again, is something very close to Julian Jaynes's (1976) theory that internal consciousness as we know it is
a relatively recent development in human history, just as the sense of an "inner conscience" is a relatively late development in
the languageboth of which developments, I believe, are inextricably bound up with developments in human community. Those
who have rejected Jaynes would do well to reconsider him in the light of Peirce (see, for instance, CP 7.453, which might have
come straight of out Jaynes's book). My interest in this theory is motivated by an interest in the metaphor upon which Jaynes
shows that the whole notion of consciousness is predicated. I believe this metaphor may be the metaicon of all metaicons: the
spatialization of mind. Indulge me in this rather long quotation from Jaynes, for he explains, better than I can, the enormous
power and fertility of this metaphor:
Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field
whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as
mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is
an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.
Consider the language we use to describe conscious processes. The most prominent group of words used to describe
mental events are visual. We "see" solutions to problems, the best of which may be "brilliant", and the person "brighter"
and "clear-headed" as opposed to "dull'', "fuzzy-minded", or "obscure" solutions. These words are all metaphors and the
mind-space to which they apply is a metaphor of actual space. In it we can "approach" a problem, perhaps from some
"viewpoint", and "grapple" with its difficulties, or seize together or "comprehend" parts of a problem, and so on, using
metaphors of behavior to invent things to do in this metaphored mind-space.
And the adjectives to describe physical behavior in real space are analogically taken over to describe mental behavior in
mind-space when we speak of our minds as being "quick", "slow", "agitated" (as when we cogitate or co-agitate),
"nimble-

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witted", "strong-" or "weak-minded." The mind space in which these metaphorical activities go on has its own group of
adjectives; we can be "broad-minded", "deep", ''open", or "narrow-minded"; we can be "occupied"; we can "get
something off our minds"; we can "put something out of mind", or we can "get it", let something "penetrate", or "bear",
"have", "keep", or "hold" it in mind.
As with a real space, something can be at the "back" of our mind, in its "inner recesses", or "beyond" our mind, or "out"
of our mind. In argument, we try to "get things through" to someone, to "reach" their "understanding" or find a "common
ground", or "point out", etc., all actions in real space taken over analogically into the space of the mind. (1976: 55-56)
I believe Jaynes is absolutely correct to call each of these figures in the language an "analog"they fit the notion of the Peircean
diagram rather precisely. I would add only one note: Not even this impressive sum of the analogs can exhaust the metaphor, for
it is grounded, I believe, in the same metaicon which, as we have observed in chapters 5 and 6, is one of the most productive in
Western poetry (voyage in space ¬ quest(ion) of being). This is a prophetically symmetrical and reciprocal metaicon. It may
explain, in part, how something that started as a secret between people in communion ("consciring" in one sort of external
space) might have become the iconic ground for that self-reflective, self-corrective knowledge within man (the very secret of
man), whence it emerged againwith manifold new significanceinto the public domain of the culture.
Peirce's own notions about physical/mental space in general provide something of a metaiconic backdrop for his entire
semeiotic. Ideas about space and timeas well the movement, within these dimensions, of forces and masseswere among those
primal ideas he called "irresistible," for it was these "upon which all science rolls" (W 3: 317-319). "It appears to me that the
method of designating temporal relations by their analogies with spatial relations must date from the very beginnings of speech,"
he wrote to Lady Welby. He went on in that letter to say that even the first few "common memories" of the first two users of
language "could not be indicated by gesture, without their analogies to spatial relations" (PW 47). He probably agreed with Kant
that Space was "a form of thought" (PW 117), though he would have defined "thought" in a much wider sensethe sense, noted
often within this study, by which Peirce understood that we are in thought, rather than thought being in us. After all, it is exactly
this truth which renders to "man in thought" that status as symbol of a larger thought, whereby different men in the same
thought become the same symbol (NEM 4: 262-263).
In a 1909 letter to Lady Welby, in which he was discussing some crucial principles of "word-formation," Peirce was suddenly
reminded of something he had not "thought of for half a century":
. . .how as a boy I invented a language in which almost every letter of every word made a definite contribution to its
signification. It involved a classification

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of all possible ideas; and I need not say that it was never completed. I remember however a number of features of it. Not
only must the ideas be classified, but abstract and psychical ideas had to be provided with fixed metaphors; such as lofty
for pride, ambition, etc. (PW 95)
How often, in the course of this study, I have wished that Peirce had completed that boyhood system of language. Perhaps
Manuscript Number 1137with its attention to the Persons, the Phenomena of Influx to the Senses, the Energies (Light, Sound),
Space, Position, Intuition, and so onis a record of his early results. Had he finished it, he might well have concluded by showing
us exactly how a logician without equal would "construct a language de novo" (CP 2.290n). All that such a master Scientist of
Signs would have needed is a few prepositions to express temporal relations, spatial relations, and motions into and out of these
situations. As for the rest, he would naturally say, "I can manage with metaphors."

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INDEX
A
Abduction, 27, 52, 60, 68, 164
Abstraction: degrees of, 25, 31-34, 37, 41-43, 85
as spatial remoteness, 45, 122
precisive vs. hypostatic, 49, 50, 51, 65, 66, 67, 79, 80
in oxymoron, 115
in semantic growth, 142,150, 156
Actuality: in Secondness, 5, 10, 11, 14, 111
As Index, 10
linguistic, 10, 47, 51, 55, 78, 97
as "event," 11
as brute force, 11
as tension, 11, 97
vs. Possibility, 34
as existence, 108
semantic category of, 120, 122
Analogical metaphor: vs. metaicon, 20, 26, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46
within metaicon, 35, 36, 46, 91,92
vs. imaginal metaphor, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 44, 78, 90, 153, 161
frequentin speech, 36
irreversible, 40, 43-45, 46, 84, 86
asymmetry of, 45, 46, 84-86
containing metaphoric image, 79
in rebus messages,156.
See also Analogy; Degenerate metaphor; Diagram
Analogy: as basic law of thought, 4, 152
explicit vs. implicit, 12, 13, 84
as Peirceandiagram, 19, 22, 24, 25, 32, 33, 36, 38
vs. genuine metaphor, 20, 22, 26, 36
as degenerate metaphor, 24, 25, 35, 39, 40, 43, 45, 67, 87, 151
abstractness of, 26, 42
ornamental vs. revelatory, 32, 39
in synesthesia, 42
dyadic nature of, 75
mentioned,30, 35, 39, 41, 44, 46, 49, 56-58, 59, 64, 68, 69, 77-79, 85, 90, 91, 92, 94, 97, 104, 107, 114, 143, 151, 153, 154,
155, 156, 158, 161, 164, 166.
See also Analogical metaphor; Degenerate metaphor; Diagram
Anomaly: vs. metaphor, 15, 102, 134, 135
as crossing of conceptual boundary, 106
as possible metaphor, 134
Archetype. See Metaicon
B
Being: Peirce's Theory of, 5, 117, 119, 120
semantic category of, 120, 127
revelation of, as final cause, 153
Boundaries: related to Categories, 106
Conceptual, 106, 107-111, 113, 114, 129, 130
Existential, 106, 108, 109, 110, 113, 129, 130, 131
Conventional, 106, 109-112
erasure of,106, 128
redundancy of, 111
ordering of, 118
reality of, 118
natural fuzziness of, 123
persistence of, 125
C
Categories (Peircean): parallel to sign types, 5, 10-12
related to definition of metaphor, 9-10
related to kinds of boundaries, 104-106
mentioned, 62, 111, 120, 127
Categories (semantic): spatial orientation of, 45
implicit, 116
binary division of, 118-119
as contiguous, 122-125
predictable 'fuzziness"of, 123
sequence of, 125, 142
hierarchical redundancy of, 130
displacement across, 130,166
in language acquisition, 151
mentioned, 129, 132, 133, 134, 147, 149
Causation. See Efficient cause; Final cause
Classes:
natural, 26
purposive, 26
vagueness of, 26.
See also Categories (semantic)
Comparison theory, 21, 53
Conceptual boundary. See Boundaries
Consciousness: as part of semeiosis, 5
relatedto acutality, 11
growth of, 146, 148, 166, 167
vs. awareness, 147, 164
based on spatial metaphor, 167, 168
Continuity: Peirce's doctrine of, 123
in the signsystem, 150
Convention: literary and linguistic, 14
symbols related to, 14
as example of Thirdness, 49
egocentrism of, 110
Conventional boundary. See Boundaries
Cross-predication: in definition of metaphor, 9,10, 12, 14
as metaphoric interaction, 11
mentioned, 125, 143
D
Dead metaphor: moribund, 79, 84
resurrectionof, 81, 82
among ideograms, 156
mentioned, 106, 141, 165
Degenerate metaphor: defined, 35
illustrated,40
mentioned, 24, 25, 39, 43, 45, 67, 87,151.
See also Analogy; Analogical metaphor;
Diagram; Image; Imaginal metaphor
Diagram: as dyadic, 19, 33, 51, 75
vs. metaicon, 20-22, 24-27, 32-39, 42, 43, 45,82, 83, 86, 92
vs. image, 20-22, 24-27, 32-39, 42, 43, 45, 78, 152, 159
as analogy, 24,25, 33, 42, 78, 79, 82, 84, 88
inclusive of image, 25, 42, 78-81, 88, 94
withinmetaicon, 25, 43, 77, 82, 86, 88, 93-95, 94
as geometer's creation, 29
as second Firstness, 33
asymmetry of, 45, 84, 84-86, 148
complements metaicon, 46, 82, 84, 87
irreversible, 46, 84-87
as metaphorical hypothesis, 74, 75
complements image, 78,79
transitory growth of, 86
overreading of, 87
extension of, 89, 93, 155
as provided bycontext, 107
interlocking, 114
in semantic growth, 152, 158
in final causation, 153

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as Peirce's typical icon, 153
role in semantic distinctions, 153
as 'syntax" of iconicity, 154
in rebus messages, 155, 156
dependence onindex, 159, 162
phonological, 162
mentioned, 90, 109, 128, 135, 143, 144, 153, 157,160, 161, 163, 168.
See also Analogy; Analogical metaphor; Degenerate metaphor
Displacement. See Figural displacement
Dissimilarity (species): as element of metaphor,8, 11, 14, 99, 100-102
meaning of, 100
in relation to similarity, 100, 101
immediacy of,104
mentioned, 102, 116, 118.
See also Tension (semantic)
Dynamic Interpretant: wide range of, 6, 105
As stage of metaphoric semeiosis, 17, 48
E
Efficient cause: vs. Final cause, 34, 160
of iconic growth, 144
Emotional Interpretant, 6
Energetic Interpretant, 6
Existential boundary. See Boundaries
Figural displacement: as a sign in itself, 17
result of vehicle interpretation, 17
as Keats' Negative Capability, 112
as semantic index,117-118, 135
between semantic categories,127
degrees of, 128 iconic force of, 134
as chaotic in surrealism, 139
F
Final cause: as rule of metaphoric growth, 12,34, 148-163
in evolution, 26, 144
as present possibility, 34, 68
vs. backward causation, 34
as general type, 38, 40, 149
as metaicon, 81,95, 148-163
vs. conscious purpose, 145
vs. efficient causation, 160
Final Interpretant: as last stage of interpretation,6
and metaphoric truth, 17
of radical vs. conservative tropes, 105
mentioned, 48, 61, 98
Firstness: subsuming possibility, 5, 7, 111
antecedence of, 11, 52, 65, 66, 67
different modes of, 19, 23, 33, 36, 51, 75, 78, 81, 82,84
generality of (vs. thirds), 33
subsuming Quality, 49, 51
Peirce's definition of, 51
ofmetaphoric similarity, 51, 52, 57, 62, 65, 67
of aesthetic experience, 51, 57, 62
known through Secondness and Thirdness, 57, 62, 67
includes more than sense qualities, 62
independence of, 66
vs. Hegelian synthesis, 67
universal, 119
mentioned, 47, 76, 77, 97, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135
Focus interpretation: vs. vehicle interpretation,13, 17, 18
mentioned, 47, 77, 97, 98, 135
H
Haiku: implied metaphor in, 3
semantic tension in, 4
Hierarchy: of hypoicons, 34-36, 42, 81, 88
of lexical classifications, 44
of icons in complexmetaphor, 117
as master boundaries, 118,126
redundancy relations of, 122
predictable vagueness of, 122
persistence of, 124
left-branching, 127
psychological reality of, 127
anthropocentricism of, 127
disruption of, 139
as goal of semantic growth, 142, 150
of semantic species, 165
mentioned, 45, 77,112, 119, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133,135, 146, 151, 159
Hieroglyphics, 154, 156
Hypoicons: defined, 19, 20, 21, 54
classified,19, 22-27, 32-39, 36, 39, 81
hierarchy of,34-36, 34, 42, 88, 96
as developmental sequence, 36, 144, 148, 152, 154, 157, 159
mentioned, 5-7, 51, 77, 96, 153, 155, 158.
See also Diagram; Image; Metaicon
Hypostatic abstraction. See Abstraction
Hypothesis. See Abduction
I
Icon: as possibility, 10, 19, 54
as ground of metaphor, 9-10, 53-56, 61
vs. symbol andindex, 14, 35
as object of metaphoric index,15-17, 89, 91, 93
as figural vehicle, 15, 47
as abstract, 16
vs. Iconic sign, 19, 21
epitomized in metaphor, 20
identical in metaphor and simile, 21
hierarchy of, 22-25,33-35, 41, 42, 77, 159
self-signifying, 23, 24
reality of, 25, 26
antecedent form of, 26, 27, 55
levels of, 26, 34, 35, 41, 42, 81, 85, 90,152
vagueness of in metaphor, 32
in symbols, 35, 157
reversible, 39, 40
commerce of (in metaiconic relations), 46
as revealer oftruth, 41, 54, 74
embodying Firstness, 57
naturalness of, 57, 67
independence of, 67
as derived from hypostatic object, 79, 80
in algebraic formula, 84
fragmentary, 84, 85
concreteness of, 85
typological, 88-89
within another icon, 91
in stanzaic structure, 96 as
primal core of Symbol, 157, 159
mentioned, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18, 31, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 60, 62, 75, 78, 83, 87, 92, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111-115,
117, 118, 133-138,140, 144, 146, 148, 151, 153, 154, 158, 160-165.
See also Diagram; Image; Metaicon;Similarity
Idealism (objective): Peirce's theory of, 113, 145, 146, 164
Ideas: reality of, 54, 119
actualization of, 68
degrees of persistence, 68, 120
as possessor of the soul, 72
in possession of the soul, 75
Ideogram, 156, 157, 159, 160
Image: in haiku, 3-4
as simplest icon, 16, 19,33, 148, 155
vs. metaicon, 19-22, 25-27, 32-39, 46, 77, 82, 83, 86, 87
vs. diagram, 19-22, 25-27, 32-39, 40-42, 44, 77, 78, 81, 86, 87, 153, 161
within diagram, 25, 26, 42, 78, 79, 80, 88, 94
within metaicon, 27, 36, 43, 46, 77, 82, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94
as degenerate metaphor, 35
irreversible, 38, 40, 43-45, 46, 84, 86
asymmetry of, 44-46, 85-86
sensory immediacy of, 46, 49, 77, 78, 79, 82, 88, 90
in semantic growth, 86, 157, 158
overreading of, 87
mentioned, 15, 29, 93, 109, 112-114, 135, 136, 137, 143, 144, 151,

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152, 154, 159, 160, 162, 163, 166.
See also
Degenerate metaphor; Imaginal metaphor
Imaginal metaphor: vs. 'imagistic," 33
frequent in conversation, 36.
See also Degenerate metaphor; Image
Immediate Interpretant, 6, 16, 99
Index: as dyadic, 10
related to Actuality, 10
causes interaction, 10, 53, 57
as element ofmetaphor, 10, 103, 164
as figural tension,14, 15, 17, 53, 57, 97
indicates icon, 14-17, 97, 98, 111, 112
vs. Symbol and Icon, 14, 35
as species dissimilarity, 14, 100, 151
contains icon, 15, 53
shapes icon, 16, 98, 111
within symbol, 35, 53
immediacy of, 104
role in reader initiation, 111
as jarring in modern poetry, 112
iconic force of, 115, 135, 137, 145
symmetrical patterning of, 135,137
in consciousness, 147, 148
in iconicasymmetry, 148
mentioned, 5, 6-8, 13, 18, 19-21, 29, 36, 54, 101, 106, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 123, 128, 131, 132, 134, 136,
138, 140, 157-159, 161, 162, 170
Indexical Hypothesis, 17, 98
Interaction: essential to metaphor, 11
Lacking in simile, 13
theory of, 21, 53
Interpretant: Energetic, 6
Logical, 6
defined,6
Emotional, 6
Immediate, 6, 16, 99
Final, 6, 17, 48, 61, 98, 105
Dynamic, 6, 17, 48, 105
dependent on sign-object distance, 111
mentioned, 13, 18, 91, 104
Isomorphism: vs. "isosensism," 22-23
concretevs. abstract, 25
reality of, 25, 26
diagrammatic vs. metaiconic, 32, 33
of sign trichotomies, 35
between mind and nature, 67, 148, 160, 166
mentioned, 24, 59, 60, 88
L
Law: in Thirdness, 5, 12
governing cross-predication, 10
as Symbol, 10, 14
in growth,12
as iconic type, 32-34, 43, 46, 81, 82, 93
in creation, 81-82
as ground of metaicon, 92, 93, 96
mentioned, 4, 61, 70, 84-87, 89, 94,140, 144, 153, 160, 161, 165
Logic: of Vagueness, 26, 163
as Semeiotic, 27
Whatley's Elements of, 30
Dictionary of
(Peirce MS 145), 143
Logical Interpretant, 6
M
Man-Symbol metaphor. See Symbol-Man metaphor
Map of metaphor, 104, 132-133
Metaicon: term defined, 20, 88
vs. image anddiagram, 22, 25, 33, 36, 38-40, 43
subsumes images and diagrams, 22, 34, 35, 43, 77, 82,88
as archetype, 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 43, 46, 77, 81-83, 86, 144, 146, 160, 161,166
as metaphoricity, 26, 151, 152
generality of, 27, 33, 36
vagueness of, 27,83
as possible law, 33, 34, 83, 90, 92, 94
as third firstness, 33, 36, 38, 81
as final cause,34, 40, 81, 82, 84, 144, 148, 159
as irresistible, 34, 83
as iconic possibility, 34, 154
universality of, 36
as master metaphor, 36, 40, 81
generative potential of, 36, 46, 82, 84,87, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162
as prototype of Symbol, 36, 84, 144, 157-164
reversibility of, 38, 40, 43-46, 83-88, 90-91, 93, 96, 137-138, 168
illustrated in Peirce's Man-Symbol metaphor, 38-40, 46, 158
as congruence, 38, 83, 88
symmetry of, 40-46, 83-89, 96, 137, 146, 168
epistemic advantage of, 44
complemented by images and diagrams, 46
as perennial, 82, 84, 165
actualization of, 82,160
as algebra of poetry, 83, 86
growth ofas system, 85
controlling semantic growth,85, 152
power to shape world view, 86
universality of, 90
misreading of, 87, 92
as suggested by indexical patterning, 137
in rebus message, 156
as efficient cause once codified, 161
mentioned, 74, 75, 95, 114, 135, 142, 143, 145, 149, 153, 163, 167
Metonymy: vs. metaphor, 12-13
in cultural evolution, 13
as underlying metaphor, 13
in linguistic change, 13, 142
role of in growth of ideograms, 156
mentioned, 99
Mind: as part of universal semeiosis, 5
as channel of actualization, 47, 54, 55, 57, 67, 68, 72
attuned to reality, 52
as type and token,146
scope of, as predicate, 147
cultural conceptions of, 147, 149
Model: vs. metaphor, 30, 52-60
O
Objective idealism (Peirce's theory), 113, 145, 146, 164
Onomatopoeia, 152, 161
Orthography, 144, 152, 155-157, 159
Oxymoron: as radical trope, 105
as conceptual boundary crossing, 114
as culmination of indexical pattern, 114
as circling paradox in Keats, 136
mentioned, 80, 115.
See alsoParadox
P
Paradox: as element of metaphor, 17, 107
circular, 136
mentioned, 34, 66, 69, 71, 80, 99, 106, 108, 111, 114, 120, 121.
See also Oxymoron; Tension
Personification: in religious metaphor, 28
asymmetry of, 45
as objective idealism, 146
mentioned, 24
Pictogram, 155, 156, 159, 160
Platonism, 5, 108, 119, 120, 138
Possibility: Firstness of, 5, 111, 122
in Icon,10, 17, 154
as antecedent reality, 10, 34, 35, 122
vs. actuality, 19, 34, 122
Irresistible, 34,68, 69, 71, 72, 75-77, 82, 83, 120
in final causation, 34, 149
Positive, 51, 52, 57, 66, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 77
different kinds of, 68-73, 77, 120, 154
Paradoxical, 69, 71, 106
Negative, 69, 71, 73, 108, 121
determinate vs. indeterminate, 82
Formal Logical, 106,107
implies relation to existence, 119

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Metaphysical (vs. Mere), 120
mentioned, 11,12, 16, 42, 46, 47, 54, 56, 59, 63, 64, 65, 74, 81, 97, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 116, 123, 124, 127, 144, 163
Precisive abstraction. See Abstraction
Predication: vs. parataxis, 113, 114
up vs. down, 129-132
hyponymic vs. general, 129-132
syntactic variety of, 132
inward vs. out-ward, 136
Q
Quality: as First Firstness, 19, 51
in imagery,33, 49, 62
as monadic, 48, 63
immediacyof, 49
as unanalyzable, 57
as self-evident beauty, 57
linguistic codification of, 62, 65
as object of discovery, 62, 65
infinity of, 67
R
Realism (philosophical): in Peirce's theory of being, 5
Peirce's progress towards, 31, 33
implications of, 47
mentioned, 7, 140
Reality: as potentiality, 27
as special mode of Being, 47
as persistence of idea, 68
grades of, 68
as fragment of ideal world, 108
Reasonableness: as archetype of human reason,32, 46
as God, 40
as ground of Man-Symbol metaphor, 40
Universal, 40, 146
expressing itself in creation, 57
Retroduction. See Abduction
Reversible metaphor. See Metaicon
S
Secondness: subsuming Actuality, 5, 11, 111
as indexical tension, 11, 57, 97, 119
in aesthetics, 57, 62
as avenue to Firstness, 65, 67
future facts of, 118, 122
as position, 121
mentioned, 51, 66, 77, 125, 127, 140, 162
Similarity: as ground of metaphor, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18
as antecedent possibility, 10, 11,55, 56
as ground of Icon, 10, 19, 35
as creative discovery, 10, 23
reality of, 11, 25-27, 47, 48, 51, 54-57, 61, 66
levels of abstraction in, 25, 26, 32, 33, 40, 42, 45
vagueness of, 26, 72
many readings of possible, 48, 49
Mills's nominalistic view of, 56
as Firstness,62, 65, 67
vs. Hegelian synthesis, 67
actualization of, 134
vs. identity, 148
vs. association, 156
as basic to language, 163.
See also Icon
Simile (vs. metaphor), 12, 13, 21
Space (dimensional): narrowing frame of, 96
position in, 121
as analog of consciousness,167
as primal idea, 168
as a form of thought,168
Peirce's notions of, 168, 169
Space (semantic): spanned by metaicon, 27
as medium of lexical hierarchy, 45
subjectivity of, 45
displacement within, 119, 136
gaps in, 134
mentioned, 16, 105, 116, 139
Substitution theory, 21, 53
Surrealism, 86, 112, 139, 140
Symbol: as element of metaphor, 10, 19, 20, 23,36
in cross-predication, 10
growth of, 10, 12, 14, 26, 38, 39, 57, 157
grounded in Law, 10,14
origins of, 12, 29, 82, 144, 157, 162
vs. Index and Icon, 14, 35
based on convention, 15, 81
self-signifying, 23, 24
indexical, 35
iconic, 35, 152
as third, 36
natural vs. man-made, 39
literary, 48
containing index and icon, 53, 157
in creation, 82
as purpose, 82, 145
as culture-determining sign, 158
as cell of consciousness, 159
etymology of, 163
mentioned, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 18, 26, 28, 32, 38, 40, 43, 46, 54, 103, 104, 111, 143, 146, 155, 160, 161, 164, 165, 168
Symbol-Man metaphor, 28, 32, 38, 39, 40, 43, 46, 146, 163, 165, 168
T
Teleology: in semeiosis, 5, 12
in poetic metaphor, 18, 36, 38, 143
goal-directed, 57, 75, 107, 143, 150, 151
as anthropomorphic,145
vs. occultism, 149
of word growth, 150
mentioned, 82, 84, 117, 122, 134, 140, 141, 144, 153, 154, 157, 160, 165, 167
Tension (semantic): in literal imagery of haiku, 4
in the nature of actuality, 11
essential to metaphor, 11, 13, 97
arising from icon, 15
as metaphoric index, 15, 118, 132
shapes icon, 16, 108, 114, 117
acquires iconic force of its own, 17, 115
causes interaction, 53
as species dissimilarity, 100
imaginative pleasure of, 104
as function of icon-object distance, 105
three conditions regulating, 106
levels of, 106-114, 128, 136
role in reader orientation, 109, 113
in up vs. down-predication, 130-132
Thirdness: subsuming Law, 5, 12
of metaphoric proposition, 11
as cross-predication, 23, 36, 57, 125, 140
vs. First in abstraction, 33
as creativity of metaphor, 36
in aesthetic experience, 57, 62
as avenue to Firstness, 65, 67
as Hegelian synthesis, 67
transcending poet and reader, 93
subsuming Habit, 111
intermediates brute Secondness, 127
Token. See Type, vs. token
Truth (metaphoric): as primary in poetry, 3, 75
actualized by semantic tension, 11, 16
as part literal, part figural, 14, 16
as Final Interpretant, 17
typological, 26
evolution of, 27
approximation to Beauty, 29
based on real similarity, 48, 54
in naming, 57
transcending fact, 90, 91, 93, 94
Type: as goal of semantic growth, 12, 150, 151
as (meta)icon, 26, 27, 32, 33, 38, 40, 45, 46, 77, 81, 87, 88, 91, 93
vs. token, 32, 38, 40,45, 46, 50, 71, 87, 91, 93, 111, 114, 127, 130-132, 136, 146, 152, 159, 160, 163
as law, 34
as final cause, 149
V
Vagueness: of metaphoric similarity, 11, 26, 27, 32, 72
of imagery in diagram, 25
indeterminacy, 26
Peirce's Logic of, 26, 163

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Page 178
typological, 27
mentioned, 22, 38, 75, 83, 97, 150, 153, 163
Vehicle: truth of, 14
vs. tenor, 15, 45, 135
as metaphorical icon, 15, 47
mentioned, 13, 17, 18, 86, 97, 98, 101, 104, 107, 116, 151
Vehicle interpretation: vs. focus interpretation, 13, 17, 18
mentioned, 97, 98, 101, 104, 107, 116, 135
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title: The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor Peirce Studies ; No. 4

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For Tom Sexton

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MICHAEL CABOT HALEY

Indiana University Press

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