34 THE MISUSE OF METAPHORS IN 



Besides, society touches us very nearly. We are our- 

 selves caught within its meshes and entangled in its tradi- 

 tions. Prejudices intervene between us and the facts, 

 passion distorts, and the serene spirit of science, with its 

 purely objective ardour, is hard to attain. Society moulds 

 the individual long before he thinks of criticising it. He 

 is his society individuated, so far as he is an individual at 

 all ; hence social criticism is the most difficult of all criti- 

 cism, for it is self-criticism. And the criticism is con- 

 ducted by any individual from the particular angle of his 

 station in life and in the flaring light of his personal 

 interests. ,"* ' 



But all these obstacles in the way of a science of the 

 facts of social life are obvious. I shall dwell in this 

 article on another difficulty, which is at once much more 

 subtle and much more powerful. It springs from our 

 very way of knowing, or, at least, from our way of 

 knowing anything new. 



" Ordinary knowledge," said the late Professor Wallace, 

 " consists in referring an object to a class of objects ; that 

 is, to a generalised image with which we are already 

 acquainted. It is not so much cognition as re-cogni- 

 tion. . . . Once we have referred the new individual to a 

 familiar category or convenient metaphor, once we have 

 given it a name, and introduced it into the society of our 

 mental drawing-room, we are satisfied." Now, scientific 

 thought breaks up these crude classifications of ordinary 

 consciousness, and generally brings under the same 

 principles objects that have few superficial or sensible 

 similarities. But neither scientific nor philosophic thought 

 escapes from the law which binds us, in the first place, to 

 interpret new objects in the light of others more familiar. 



