Nay, if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for that divine ME of his, cast hither, like a light-particle, down from Heaven?
Thus is he said also to be clothed with a Body.
'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 except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless?
If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language,--then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues and living integuments.

An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _Attention_ a _Stretching-to_?
The difference lies here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an apoplectic tendency.

Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks (_Putz-Maentel_), and tawdry woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may gather whole hampers,--and burn them.' Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical?
However, that is not our chief grievance; the Professor continues: 'Why multiply instances?
It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-vesture of the Eternal.

Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off.