Communicating with Metaphors, page 17

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel

Metaphors are slippery things. Just as patriotism has said to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, a metaphor can be the last and best tool of a writer who has no legitimate way to make or establish a point.

An appropriate metaphor can shed light and clarity on a topic. But a metaphor can also be used to make something that is not true appear plausible.

Metaphors can be used to invoke the highest and best in people. They can also bring out the worst.

Consider the following somewhat plausible statement, which partially consists of a number of metaphors:

THERE are some truths which are so obvious that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. They sometimes pass by such truisms as though blind and are most astonished when someone suddenly discovers what everyone really ought to know. Columbus's eggs lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are met with less frequently.

Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature's rule: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on this earth.

Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc.

Would you be surprised if I told you these words came from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf? That they are part of a specious argument for “racial purity,” against intermarriage? (The succeeding (and unquoted) paragraphs are particularly disgusting in their references to Jews.)

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