Metaphor: The Marriage of Thought and Imagination

C.S. Lewis provided three guiding principles concerning the interplay between thoughts and the imagination. I’ll just call this the marriage which metaphor provides:

We have now three guiding principles before us:

1. That thought is distinct from the imagination which accompanies it.

2. That thought may be in the main sound even when the false images that accompany it are mistaken by the thinker for true ones.

3. That anyone who talks about things that cannot be seen, or touched, or heard, or the like [the other senses], must inevitably talk as if they could be seen or touched or heard [i.e. metaphor].

From chapter 10. “Horrid Red Things” in Miracles by C.S. Lewis.