Metaphors and the Alphabeto Cogitationum Humanarum

In my beautiful copy of the Sartor Resartus, (Henry Altemus, Philadelphia, 1894, p.78) I found this very interesting depiction of Language:

Carlyle

Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Garment, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you expect some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, — then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments

Carlyle contributes this metaphor, that Language is a body whose muscles are metaphors. This caught my attention because of my interest in metaphors, and of language-whose mastery is central to reasoning. This quote reminded me of Leibniz, who thought that it should be possible to find a small set of elementary concepts from which all known and new concepts could be derived; the idea of an alphabet of human thoughts (Alphabeto Cogitationum Humanarum), an irreducible system of notions, that cannot be further clarified. Now, Logic consists in concatenating those simple notions of language into more complex constructions, either inductively (heuristically - ars inveniendi) or deductively (ars demostrandi).  Descartes seems to concur with this idea, because he points that the origin of some of our concepts are basically metaphorically structured: 


I think that there are certain primitive notions in us which are like originals. There are very few such notions. For apart from the most general notions of being, number, duration, ... which apply to everything that we can conceive, we have only the notion of extension that is specifically for the body, and from that flow the notions of shape and movement; and for the soul on its own we have only the concept of thought, which includes perceptions of the understanding and inclinations of the will...

Therefore, the art of combining metaphors, allegories, and other basic notions through logic constitutes the reasoning. It is important therefore that the kids learn a lot of vocabulary, many languages, and read a lot. In doing so, it is how we can foster their reasoning skills. As a last note, Hegel calls the use of "allegories and the like", "the pictorial element in thought" which healthily reminds us about the nature of concept creation, when using these figures.

Check this amazing metaphor resource at: http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/