Myth, in its deep structure as well as in its superficial content, is about this compound relation between body/mind and word/world. It is metaphoric, not in the sense that is uses what we call ‘figures of speech’, mere rhetorical devices, but in the root sense of the word: 'carrying across’ the convenient boundaries we establish between sexes, seasons, species and stars. This metaphoric leakage is not consciously contrived, nor is it peculiar to myth; it penetrates, in the act, everything we do, all the sense we make- even in the most narrowly specialized branch of science. Our being-in-the-world is itself a continuous process of two-way criss-crossing between ourselves and the world which cannot help being metaphoric, so in Emerson’s words, 'The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.’
— David Maclagan
