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II.—THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS.

By DOROTHY M. EMMET.

" THE procedure of rationalism," writes Prof. Whitehead,*

" is the discussion of analogy. The limitation of rationalism
the inescapable diversity." In this paper I shall consider
metaphysics as a form of analogical thinking, and ask
whether what we call a metaphysical system is not a Weltan-
schauung based on analogy with something which has seemed
significant in the experience of the metaphysician. I shall
consider what is meant by " significance " in this connection ;
ask with what justification, if any, we draw these analogies
from microcosmic to macrocosmic significance, and indicate
where I should differ from the Thomistic view of the
analogia entis.
" In philosophy," says Kantf (introducing his Analogies
of Experience), " analogies signify something very different
from what they represent in mathematics. In the latter
they are formulae which express the equality of two
quantitative relations and are always constitutive, so that if
three members of the proportion are given, the fourth is
likewise given, that is, can be constructed. But in philosophy
the analogy is not the equality of two quantitative but of
two qualitative relations ; and from three given members
we can obtain a priori knowledge only of the relation to
a fourth, not the fourth member itself. The relation

* Modes of Thought, p. 134.

t See N. Kemp Smith's edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, p. 211.

A
28 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

however yields a rule for seeking the fourth member in

experience, and a mark whereby it can be detected. An
analogy of experience is therefore only a rule according

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to which a unity of experience may arise in perception.
It does not tell us how mere perception or empirical
intuition in general itself comes about. It is not a principle
constitutive of the objects, that is the appearances, but only
regulative . . . By these principles, then, we are justified
in combining appearances only according to what is no
more than an analogy with the logical and universal unity
of concepts." I shall reserve consideration of Kant's
contention that analogies of experience are only regulative
and not constitutive until I come to the general question of
the justification of analogical thinking in metaphysics. In
any case this is not a paper about Kant. But I want to
draw attention to the point he makes in the first part of the
passage I have quoted : that in philosophy analogy is used
to suggest a qualitative, not a quantitative relation. By
a quantitative analogy is meant a ratio such as 2 : 4 :: 4 : x,
in which given knowledge of the three terms and the
proportion we can determine the value of x. Does
" qualitative " mean more than the looser way in which
analogy is used as soon as we extend it from its mathematical
sense of a relation of proportionate equality ?* As St.
Thomas says,^ " Proportio dicitur dupliciter ; uno modo
certa habitudo unius quantitatis ad alteram, secundum quod
duplum, triplum et asquale sunt species proportionis ;
alio modo queelibet habitudo unius ad alterum proportio
vocatur, et sic potest esse proportio creaturae ad Deum."
I take qucelibet here to mean " any " in the merely indefinite

* C.f. Aristotle, Topics I, 17, where the formula of analogy are given as
COS €TCpoV 7rp0S €T*pOV Tl, OVTCOS o\\o npOS <?A\o, a n d CO? fTfpOV iv €Tep<j>TLVl,
VUT(OS aWo €V ClAXcO.

Mr. Joseph (in his Introduction to Logic, p. 537) shows how when analogy
comes to be used loosely to mean likeness it cannot be interpreted as pro-
portionate relation without forcing the sense.
t Summa Theologica, la, qu. 12, art. i.
 II. THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 29

sense of " any kind of relation of one thing to another "

and not to mean "qualitative " in any special sense. This
would answer to what is meant by analogy in popular

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and also in scientific use. I n its popular sense an analogy
is really little more than a metaphor ; for example, the
description of mind as a kind of telephone operator sitting
somewhere in the brain receiving messages along the
afferent nerves and transmitting messages down the efferent
nerves to the muscles. This popular metaphor is misleading
for the reason, amongst others, that there is no gap in the
reflex arc which we can point to as the " seat " of the mind.
But it is an instance of the type of popular analogy which is
often advanced as though it amounted to an explanation.
In the scientific use of analogy a partial resemblance
between two different things is taken as suggesting a further
resemblance. We reason from the presumption that if
things have some similar attributes or functions or corre-
lations of these, that certain of their other attributes or
functions or their correlations will also be similar. But an
analogy of this kind is used simply as suggesting a hypothesis
needing further investigation, the probability of the
hypothesis being strengthened, as every inductive logician
knows, by the examination of instances of widely different
types in which the similar characteristics occur or are
correlated, and also by the relative importance of these
characteristics. In this paper I am not proposing to discuss
the scientific use of analogy as considered in inductive logic.
The particular question I have set myself, namely, the
metaphysical use of analogy, is one to which the treatment
of analogy in inductive logic seems to me to be largely
irrelevant. This is because in the inductive and scientific
use of analogy we are reasoning from parallel cases, and are
looking for a similarity of function or relation between
different terms within experience. But the philosophical
or metaphysical use of analogy seems to be peculiar in
that the terms between which some likeness of relation
is suggested belong essentially to different orders. For we
are trying to draw analogies not merely between parallel
A2
30 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

cases which are different elements within experience, but

between something within experience and something about
the nature of reality. The nearest approach to this jump

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from the part to the whole is the use of analogies in science
not inductively, but to describe, e.g., the substantial nature
of matter. Physicists presumably do not really believe
that the ether is a sort of elastic fluid : when pressed they
would probably say, as (I think) Russell does somewhere,
that the " ether " represents the missing substantive of the
verb " to undulate." But, nevertheless, such analogical
models are of service in helping to bring a more intelligible
unity into conceptions of the nature of the physical world.
But when we come to metaphysical analogies, we are
asking not only " How can we make the nature of the
physical world more intelligible ? " (which might, as Kant
says, only mean how can we find a rule for making a unity
out of appearances), but " What is real ? " And here
what a metaphysician appears to do is to construct an
imaginative theoretic model, drawn by analogy from
whatever it is which has seemed to make most sense within
his own experience. His system is a Weltanschauung, that is
an intuition of and response to the world from the standpoint
of some particular kind of intellectual or spiritual experience.
So the first step in seeking to understand his system is to try
to appreciate the kind of intellectual or spiritual experience
through which he sees the world ; and if we can enter into
this with intellectual sympathy, if we gain nothing else,
we should at least have the enlargement of imaginative
vision which would come from seeing what the world looks
like from this perspective. So we may see how Plato finds
the key to metaphysics in a kind of intuitive perception of
abstractions and the relations between them which is
illustrated pre-eminently in mathematics ; Aristotle in a
relation of " f o r m " and " m a t t e r " to which he had
evidently been led through his interest in tracing processes
of change and particularly of biological growth. For
Plotinus I think the key words would be " vision" and
" intellectual beauty " ; Spinoza writes his metaphysics to
 II.—THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 31

explain the peculiar kind of peace which comes from

accepting what you see to be necessary ; Hegel sees the world
in terms of the movement of a sustained philosophical

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argument (would it be fair to say an argument which he
believes must inevitably terminate in victory over all his
predecessors and opponents ?). Bradley finds his clue in
the unity of sentience ; Whitehead (I think) in the feeling
inspired" by the achievement of a certain kind of aesthetic
composition.
It would be fascinating to pursue this further and to try
and discover the particular kind of spiritual or intellectual
experience which was evidently the most exciting and
significant to each philosopher and which gave him the
perspective from which he constructs his Weltanschauung,
I believe that in addition to logical argument and criticism,
in each case there will be found to be some such element,
and it will be found that it is this element which gives its
characteristic positive content to the system. I suggest
McTaggart as a test case. Here, if anywhere, we have a
sustained attempt to construct a rigorously demonstrated
metaphysics. But even here, as Prof. Broad has shown,
McTaggart has not really proved that the only kind of
series which could form a determining correspondence
hierarchy must be a series of minds perceiving each other.
I suggest that the deciding factor leading McTaggart to
this view was his mystical sense for affection, conceived as
the perceiving of one mind by another, and that this part
of his system is an analogical argument from this.
All this might suggest that I am reducing metaphysics
to a study of the psychological and temperamental idiosyn-
crasies of metaphysicians. But I do not think this conclusion
necessarily follows. For it is at least possible that meta-
physicians who are capable of particularly vivid, though
different, forms of intellectual experience, may in effect be
able to appreciate certain aspects of reality to which those
forms of intellectual experience are responsive. But this
leads us directly to the question of the justification of
drawing analogies from some selected microcosmic experi-
32 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

ence to the nature of the macrocosm. Can such analogies

claim to do more than, as Kant says in the passage quoted
above, provide us with a rule for making a unity out of

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appearances which is only regulative and not constitutive?
In a paper in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for
1937-38, Miss MacDonald complains that philosophers use
words by analogy with their ordinary usage without giving
the analogy any intelligible application. In this way they
trade on our familiarity with the ordinary usage to make
it seem that they are saying something significant. So
concerning the Aristotelian distinction of form and matter
she says (p. 306), " If the same gold is first a coin and then
a ring we could say quite sensibly that one object has
become another, though its material has remained the
same throughout these changes. We might describe this
by saying that ' This gold was a coin and is now a ring.'
The use of the words ' m a t t e r ' and ' material substance'
is intended to suggest by analogy that an ' ultimate'
something is related to different sets of ' essential " predi-
cates at different times as a piece of gold is related to different
shapes at different times." That metaphysical philosophy
does use words in an analogical sense I agree ; also that it is
often guilty of not recognising this. But I do not believe
that when, e.g., an Aristotelian analyses something into
matter and form, or substance and attributes, he would
say, if pressed, that he ever thought he was " discovering "
its constituents in the same sense as a chemist does when he
analyses water into hydrogen and oxygen (the word
" analyse " is therefore in the former case clearly analogical).
What he does think he is doing is something more like
what Miss MacDonald says on p. 307 : " What the philoso-
pher does is to notice certain differences in our use of
ordinary words which seem to require explanation by a
theory about that to which the words are said to refer."
But whereas she continues, " but it may be that what is
required is just a description of these different uses and
their criteria " (meaning " criteria in sense experience " ?),
I should suggest that what is required is a more explicit
 II. THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 33

recognition of the analogical character of such theories,

and a closer inquiry into the justification of such analogical
thinking. But I am sure that Miss MacDonald is right in

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saying that by using words which have well understood
associations in ordinary usage, and not showing that he is
using them analogically, a metaphysician may trick people
into thinking that they understand something when they
do not. What is needed is a closer study of the analogical
element in the metaphysician's use of language, and a
thorough attempt to see whether it can be justified.
This paper cannot claim to be more than a preliminary
sketch indicating the need for such an enquiry.*
Of course, the most impressive attempt to show how by
analogical thinking we can arrive at some positive
metaphysical knowledge is the Thomist theory of the
analogia entis. St. Thomas contends that we cannot
predicate any property univocally of God and creatures,
or as we might say, of transcendent and empirical being.
" Similitudo intellectus nostri non sufficientur probat
aliquid de Deo, propter hoc quod intellectus non univoce
invenitur in Deo et in nobis." Nevertheless, predicates
drawn from the relative perfections of creatures can be
applied to God not merely equivocally but analogically.
But the analogia entis which makes this possible is not the
analogy of the properties of one thing to those of another
[analogia proportionis seu attributionis) which, as we have seen
above, may be merely metaphorical. It is an analogy of
proportionality {analogia proportionalitatis) which asserts
that there is a likeness in the relation of one thing to its
properties and that of something else to its properties.

* Mr. Mackinnon's recent Aristotelian Society paper " What is a meta-

physical statement? " came into my hands after this paper was written, and
so too late for me to take account of the important considerations he raises.
But I think I find on page 21 of his paper a welcome independent support for
part (though I suspect only part) of what I am trying to say here. The
analogue through which Mr. Mackinnon would seek to see into the world is
" that highly complex unity which we call the self", which points, he holds,
to a metaphysics of pluralistic realism.
34 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

So there is an analogy between the relation of the creature

to its properties and of God to His properties, viz. •

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Creature X uncreated
Participated Being ' Non-participated Being

If we ask how we know there is this proportionality in virtue

of which we can say something by analogy concerning the
relation of Absolute Being to its properties, there are as far
as I can see two lines along which Thomistic philosophers
justify this :—
(i) By the ontology of universals, as predicated of de-
pendent and derivative beings through the " participation "
of these in timeless and non-derivative Being. So a creature
may be good or wise, but is not goodness or wisdom. God
is not a member of a class of things of which we can predicate
goodness or wisdom. But since goodness or wisdom in
man are only possible through participation in God's
timeless Being, which contains all universals formaliter, we
can say that there is something in God which is to His Being
as a man's goodness or wisdom is to his being.* This is
said to be analogous to what we mean by goodness or
wisdom in man eminenter. I am not clear what is meant by
eminenter. The insistence by Thomists that words cannot
be used univocally of God and creatures shows that it is
not intended to imply the anthropomorphism of attributing,
e.g., goodness or wisdom to God in the same sense as we
attribute them to a man but in a superlative degree. But
I am not clear just how this word enables their doctrine of
analogy to steer its via media between the pitfalls of

* The religious power of the theory of the analogia entis has been expressed
most forcibly by Father Przywara in his book Polarity (English translation
by A. C. Bouquet). He describes analogia entis as meaning that the nature
of the creature, which is a process of becoming, may suggest similitudes of
the nature of God on whom it depends, but that the essence of God, since it
is not essence-in-becoming, but Necessary Being is in the end beyond the
similitudes.
 I I . — T H E USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 35

anthropomorphism on the one hand and of agnosticism on

the other.

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(ii) Analogical argument is held by Thomists to be
justified by the " laws of being."* Perfect Being, Ens
Realissimum, is an ontologically necessary idea. This is
not established by any form of the Ontological Argument
(which in my opinion is the only way in which it might
possibly be established—but to go into that would be far
beyond the scope of this paper). It is arrived at from the
empirical fact that something given exists, and that it
might not have existed (is this empirical ?), from which we
argue to the dependence of this contingent being on a prime
cause which necessarily exists from its own essence, Ens
Realissimum. But apart from any other difficulties we may
raise concerning the Cosmological Argument,! the following
special difficulties appear to me to be relevant in appealing
to it as a justification for analogical reasoning.
(a) Have we any prior non-analogical knowledge of
Being which gives us a basis on which we can draw
analogies as to its nature, or is not all our knowledge of
Being analogical ? We meet Being in some determinate
form of being and then describe it analogically, e.g., draw
analogies from the mode of being of a man to that of a piece
of coal or of a kangaroo.
(b) Analogical reasoning permeates the metaphysical
proofs of an Ens Realissimum, so that I find it difficult to see
how they can claim an independent certainty which enables
them to furnish a basis for analogy. For instance, St.
Thomas' Five Ways J imply the validity of causal analogies

* Cf. for instance, Penido, Le rdle de Vanalogie en theologie dogmatique, p. 53 ff.,

and 88 ff. ; and Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione, Pt. I, p. 302 ff.

t See, for instance, the article by Prof. Broad in the Journal of Theological
Studies, vol. XL, number I.
J Summa Theologica la, qu. 2, art. 3.
36 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

in stating the relation of God to the world. If we say that

in expressions like " First Cause " the notion of Cause is
used eminenter, I can only make sense of this by taking it to

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mean that it is used analogically, so we are back where we
were.
(c) The Cosmological Argument claims to show a basis
for analogy in the dependence of contingent beings for the
realization of their essences on Necessary Being whose
essence is the same as its existence. According to Thomist
ontology, this means that the exemplars of all created
things are already contained in the essence of God on Whom
they are dependent for the realization of the perfections
proper to them. This enables us to draw analogies from
these relative perfections to the necessary Being on whom
they are dependent for their actualization. But I suspect
that we may be misled here by interpreting " perfection "
in too moral a sense. Does it say more than that there is
an analogy between things which realize their ends qua
realising their ends, and that this is what " Good " here
means ? In fact, Thomism here appears completely to
follow Aristotle in making " Good " an analogical con-
ception,* meaning the realization by something of its end.
But to say that Good as predicated of the Ens Realissimum
means Ens Realissimum is the perfect realization of Being
seems a tautology. I am led therefore to the conclusion
that the Analogy of Proportionality can tell us nothing about
the nature of transcendent Being. It can at most say an
sit, not quale sit. (This agnostic interpretation of St. Thomas
is, I believe, a possible one, and to take it is, of course, to
recognize the force of my difficulty (a) above.)
But Thomists do take analogical reasoning beyond this,
using similitudes from the relative perfections of created
things to say something about the nature of transcendent
Being. And in this further use of analogy they would seem
to be having recourse to the analogy not of proportionality,

* Cf. Nicomachean Ethics, I , vi, 12. OVK (O-TLV &pa TO ayaov KOIVOV r i Kara
piav Idtav . . . . rj fxdWov XOT' avakoyiav.
 II.—THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 37

but of proportion, or similitude of attributes, which, as we

have seen above, is perilously near to metaphor. Moreover,
it means making a selection of those types of function or

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relation which seem appropriate or illuminating as similitudes
through which to try to see into the nature of transcendent
Being. But on what ground is the selection made ?
According to Thomist principles, we should look on the
universe as a hierarchical economy of things pursuing their
ends without essential mutual frustration, and in this
respect all things should be in their degree appropriate
similitudes.* We should thus draw similitudes not only
from the wisdom or goodness of a good man, but from good
liver flukes and good mustard gas (that is, of course, so
long as these are fulfilling a natural end—it might be argued
that man's sinful ingenuity discovers unnatural uses for
good mustard gas).
But should we find ourselves (as I personally do) drawn
to looking at nature as a study of the forms of process
rather than of the procession of forms (to use a phrase of
Whitehead's), we should have additional difficulty in
using all modes of being in the fluent processes of nature
as analogies of the nature of a necessary Being on which
they depend. For, according to the mediaeval ontology,
the necessary Being was held to contain the exemplars of
the limited number of fixed kinds of which nature consisted ;
and the individuals of each kind actualized the end proper
to them through the operation upon them of the necessary-
Being in whom that end was already formally realized.
We thus have the processio ad extra of forms into the created

* Przywara certainly appears to grasp this nettle when he says " The
whole process of becoming from dead matter upwards to pure spirit, and from
pure spirit downwards to dead matter, is the whole of it in the highest degree
near to God and in the highest degree the similitude of God " (op. cit., p. 69).
And again " The creature in its totality is a window whereby we see into the
Being of God." But, nevertheless, like other Thomists, when he comes to
give illustrations of the types of perfection within the created world to be
used as similitudes of the nature of God, he selects words like " wisdom,"
which he thinks appropriate.
38 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

world. But it may appear that the modes of being in the

world of nature and of human life, attain such relative
perfections as they do attain as the result of some more

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fluent and experimental process than the procession of
forms, and by a process moreover which appears to involve
a considerable measure of conflict and frustration. In
this case such analogies as we can draw from forms of
experience within the process to the nature of the process
as a whole, or as to the relation of the process to a trans-
cendent Being on whom it depends, would be more
precarious.
I have shown, moreover, that I cannot appeal to an
independent knowledge of Being to provide the justification
for metaphysical analogies, since any ontological statements
I can make appear to be already to some degree analogical.
I cannot therefore appeal to an independent knowledge of
the " laws of being " to provide a basis for analogies, but
must see into the laws of being, if at all, through analogies.
And these analogies depend on selective judgments of what
is significant. Then are they just creations of aesthetic
imagination, or egoistic attempts to dominate the world
in theory in terms of a merely personal reaction ? May they
not deserve the stricture Bradley passes on those who claim
to find their sense of significance in the experience of volition.
" Volition gives us, of course, an intense feeling of reality ;
and we may conclude, if we please, that in this lies the heart
of the mystery of things. Yes, perhaps ; here lies the answer
—for those who may have understood ; and the whole
question turns on whether we have reached an understanding.
But what you offer me appears much more like an
experience not understood, but interpreted into hopeless
confusion. It is with you as with the man who, transported
by his passion, feels and knows that only love gives the
secret of the universe. In each case the result is perfectly
in order, but one hardly sees why it should be called
metaphysics."*

* Appearance and Reality, p. 115 (and Edition).

 II. THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 39

What then should be called metaphysics ? If it were

only in the end a man's personal reaction to the world,
we might still ask why he reacts in this particular way,

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and, if he is a metaphysician, the answer probably in
the end is because he finds he must. His reaction has not
the immediacy of the artist, who is also concerned with
precision in expressing his responses to experience. It is
rather (to use a phrase of Kierkegaard's in another context)
" an immediacy after reflection." The nearest approach
to it in this respect is perhaps the judgment of the literary
critic. A metaphysician must make as precise a clarification
and critique as he can of forms of thought and experience
and their categories. But when all this work of analysis
and criticism is done he has somehow to convey his general
impression of what it all comes to. This impression might
be described as a " total assertion," to borrow a phrase
of the late Professor Stocks'.* I do not know whether
Stocks would have accepted the view I am suggesting here,
but I find his distinction between total and partial assertions
helpful at this point. A partial assertion is either a pro-
position stating matter of fact or a logical proposition
which can be brought into a coherent system with other
propositions of the same type. A total assertion cannot
be verified ; it expresses a judgment concerning the nature
of something as a whole. So we could make a number of
partial assertions about a man, e.g., that he is bald, aged 45,
keeps chickens, is an A.R.P. warden, etc., But if we say
that he is a good man, we are making a total assertion
which cannot be exhaustively analysed into a number of
partial assertions of matter of fact. If we were asked why
we think he is a good man, we might say that he looks after
his old parents, gives away some of his eggs, spends his
spare time on A.R.P., and the like. But it might be possible
to make any number of partial assertions of this kind, and
yet they would not mean the same as we mean when we

* See his lecture On the Nature and Grounds of Religious Belief, reprinted
in Reason and Intuition, p. 38 ff.
40 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

say that so and so is a " good " man. For it might be

possible to enumerate a whole series of estimable acts and
ways of behaving, and yet at the end of it all we might not

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be willing to say that so and so was a good man. (" Though
I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give
my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth
me n o t h i n g " — " h a v i n g c h a r i t y " would appear to be of
the nature of a total judgment, like saying that someone
is good.) The total judgment expresses our response to the
man's character as a whole.
Now metaphysical judgments seem to me to be some-
thing of this nature. (Here again, I am driven to making
an analogy.) The subordinate work of analysis and
criticism is analogous to the statements about the way in
which the man behaves, which we might cite as evidence
if we were asked why we thought he was a good man. And
in a sense they are evidence ; and so also the critical and
argumentative part of a work on metaphysics show
considerations which point towards the final Weltanschauung.
But the Weltanschauung expresses a total impression which is
more than a strict inference from the subordinate critical
discussions, just as the statement that a man is good is a
response to his character as a whole which is more than a
sum of the partial assertions which could be made about his
behaviour. So in both cases there is a certain jump from
the empirical evidence to the total impression. And
because there is this jump, the total assertion cannot be
proved ; it can only be exhibited and expressed in analogical
language. So Parmenides, the father of metaphysics,
speaks of Being as " complete on every side, like the mass of
a rounded sphere, equally poised from the centre in every
direction."* So also Plotinus speaks of creation in terms
of inward vision, which with regard to the material world
is combined with a rdA/xa or " act of rebellious audacity."
Alexander speaks of the " restlessness of Space-Time " ;

* Fragment 98, Ratter and Preller, Hist. Phil. Grace. (7th Edition).
 II.—THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 41

McTaggart of the " perception " of minds by each other ;

Whitehead of the " appetition " of the world, and so forth.
Some of these expressions are more boldly metaphorical

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than others, but we can surely only find any sense in any
of them by regarding them as extrapolations to the world
as a whole of analogies drawn from something within
experience.
But if we have no independent knowledge of the nature
of real Being—the unknown fourth term to which our
analogies point—we may well ask whether we have any
criterion, beyond perhaps a sense of aesthetic fittingness,
to which we can appeal, and which may discipline our
analogies. There must indeed come the point, as I said
above, when they seem inevitable at least to the person
who makes them. Beyond this, I recall what Whitehead
says of metaphysical propositions in Modes of Thought
(p. 66 ff.), that they cannot be proved ; we can only appeal
to their " self-evidence to civilized minds." I am not sure
what " self-evidence " means in this context. It certainly
cannot be meant in the rigorous sense of logical necessity.
It may mean what Mr. Ryle has called somewhere the
" Of course " with which we tend to greet a philosophical
discovery. Possibly it also means that metaphysical
propositions should make their appeal to reflective people
as more than egoistic attempts to dominate the world in
theory from the standpoint of some limited form of experi-
ence, in that the analogies they contain should commend
themselves as really shedding light (perhaps critical light)
on the civilized thought, scientific, literary, religious, of
an age, and should also show the power of exercising a
certain creative influence on its intellectual imagination.
This means that there is likely to be a certain shift in the
philosophical analogies which will commend themselves
as appropriate in different periods of thought. Therefore,
as Whitehead says, a philosophical position is never
disproved ; it is only abandoned when it ceases to be
relevant. Very few analogies can stand up to the criticism
42 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

of successive generations of t h o u g h t ; and since they must

be disciplined empirically by the best that we can do in
the way of scientific and historical thinking, we get a

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purging of the more fanciful analogies, such as those found
in mediaeval bestiaries, astrology, number mysticism, and
the like. Nevertheless, metaphysical analogies still remain
highly selective, and come back in the end to the meta-
physician's own personal impression of what is significant.
This selectivity is made still more abstract and partial by
the demands of consistency. This is corrected to some extent
by that interplay of theories which we call the " history
of philosophy." It must also be corrected by coming back
again and again to the more immediate kinds of response
to the world, and the more concrete total assertions about
it, which we find in poetry, religion, and every day practice.
Such total assertions as these enshrine are not guided
primarily by a demand for systematic consistency, but by
a flair for appropriateness in the association of images and
ideas. So, as Mr. Empson has shown,* to look for the
mutually exclusive meanings which would be demanded
by strict logical consistency is often to miss the point of
poetic imagery. We have a kind of ambiguity which is the
association of images meaning several things at once in
one phrase ; but this is the result of compression, not of
vagueness of expression. The total impression left is a sort
of " taste in the head " which conveys the sense of the
image as a whole. There is thus a unity in the image over
and above the associated meanings which can be analysed
as entering into it.

Half-way between these ambiguous images of poetry

(and I think of religion) and the analogical concepts of
metaphysics would be Bergson's " fluid images " by which
he suggests we should try to express intuitions of life and
movement.! These he says cannot really be represented

* See his Seven Types of Ambiguity.

t Cf. Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 15.
 II.—THE USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 43

by images ; the only way we can come near to doing it is

by a clash of different images, so that we know that we can
identify no one of them with the intuition itself. But when

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Bergson seeks to describe metaphysics as " the science
which seeks to dispense with symbols," I cannot follow him.
If metaphysics is, as it surely must be, a form of expression
after reflection, it must use symbols of some kind (otherwise
it would be not a form of expression, but of immediate
experience), and it must therefore accept the rebuke of
being to that extent selective and abstract.
The symbols which it does use appear to move perhaps
uneasily between the univocal language of logic and of
science, and the ambiguities of poetic and religious imagery.
It needs the former to discipline and criticize the vagaries
of its analogies ; it looks to the latter to correct their
partiality. So metaphysics should spring from a critique
of the sciences (in a wide sense of science) and point towards
theology (again in a wide sense, in which a profession of
atheism is a negative form of theology). Nor should I be
prepared to state a general rule by which we can draw a
clear line between metaphysics and theology, if to do so
would imply that metaphysics is demonstrable in a way in
which theology is not, since metaphysics includes the
element of analogical thinking through which we record a
personal response to the character of the world.
This progression through metaphysical analogy to
theological myth is illustrated in the avakoyiou, oi
Republic VI. The Simile of the Sun, as Professor Ferguson
has convincingly shown,* is based on the form of argument
by diairesis and analogia, in which a similarity of function
yields a logos by which diverse terms can be defined. The
common nature of the Sun and Good is to be excellence
actualizing perfections ; their differentia the field within
which these are actualized. So vision and knowledge are
analogous in being dependent on an excellence other than

* In the Classical Quarterly, Vol. X X V I I I , number 3.

B
44 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

themselves for their actualization. The Simile of the

Divided Line keeps to the form of an analogical argument
—as • iiKacrCct to mo~Tis, so Sia^oia to vorjcri^. I have

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no space here to discuss the interpretation of the Line. I
consider that Professor Ferguson has also shown convincingly
that iucao-La- should be taken to mean indirect vision. So
the relation of S i a w t a to vorjaus, which is to be
determined, is proportionate to the relation of conjecture
based on indirect vision to direct vision in the sphere of
sense-perception.

But neither the nature of the Good in the Simile of the

Sun nor the nature of VOTJO-LS in the Divided Line can
be determined in its essence ; we can only indicate its
relation to something else which is more familiar. It is
thus an analogy in which the essence of the fourth term
remains unknown ; or rather we can only know how the
third and fourth terms are related to each other, and as
much about the nature of the fourth term as this relation
suggests. Moreover, the analogies of the Sun and the
Line prepare the way for the symbolism of the Myth of the
Cave. I fully agree with Professor Ferguson that we cannot
find a one to one correspondence between the analogies
and the Myth of the Cave, so that the attempt to interpret
the Line as the progression of stages of knowledge cor-
responding to the ascent of the prisoner from the Cave is
to miss the main point, both of the Simile of the Line and
of the Myth of the Cave. But, nevertheless, the analogies
between vision and knowledge drawn in the Similes of the
Sun and Line prepare our minds for the symbolism of the
Cave. The Cave is true Myth, and not allegory, in that
we should not try to find a one to one correspondence
between the details of symbolism and details of inter-
pretation, but take the cumulative impression the image
as a whole makes upon us after the way has been paved
for its reception by analysis of the preceding analogies.
That impression is one of the moral and intellectual
 I I . — T H E USE OF ANALOGY IN METAPHYSICS. 45

struggle of a soul undergoing conversion from the trickery

of sophistic dbraiSevaia.
Plato's change of style to the myth form makes it

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apparent that the metaphysical analogies point beyond
themselves. As we have seen metaphysics makes use of
analogical thinking, drawing analogies between terms which
are qualitatively different, viz., between elements within.
experience and a fourth term which transcends experience.
The fourth term in the analogy remains unknown in its
essence, but we claim that our analogy tells us something
about our relation to this unknown term. For, as we have
seen, we express in the analogy the way in which we find
ourselves impelled to respond to the impact of the
transcendent term upon us.
Nevertheless, I have shown such reason as I can for
thinking that metaphysics can be something more than a
chronicle of temperamental reactions, or flights of aesthetic
imagination. For in its attempts to arrive at some sort of
intuition of things as a whole, on the one hand it must
be disciplined by respect for the empirical sciences, and on
the other hand it must be sensible to such more concrete
responses as are witnessed to in poetry, moral experience,
and the historic religions. But if we are alive as to how far
our judgment of the importance or significance of different
aspects of experience is affected by the selective nature
of our own thought and by considerations bound up with
the intellectual and sociological climate of the time in
which we live, we shall hesitate to claim for any meta-
physical system that it is a philosophia perennis, or a purely
objective science of Being, or a through and through
penetration of the world in thought. Our metaphysical
analogies may serve so long as the total assertions they
express help to throw light through some unity of intui-
tion on the partial assertions which are accumulated
empirically, and also if they help to exhibit the
" inescapable diversity" in the character of the
empirical. They may also serve so long as they exercise
46 DOROTHY M. EMMET.

a creative and stimulating influence on further thought.

When they cease to do this, they will be not disproved
but abandoned as irrelevant. But perhaps in the end

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the point at which we can say with most confidence that
positive ground has been gained is in our better
understanding, through its conscious articulation, of the
experience from which the analogy has been drawn.