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Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Chapter 2: Of the State of Nature
Explanation and Analysis—Natural Law, Natural Bind:
In Chapter 2, Locke shares his understanding of human nature and the "natural law" that governs human behavior. At one moment, he uses a metaphor to describe those who break these fundamental laws:
In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7: Of Political of Civil Society
Explanation and Analysis—Family Power:
Throughout The Second Treatise, Locke thinks about the relationship between the power dynamic of a family and the power dynamic of a federal government—and the relationship between these two societal structures as forms of small-scale and large-scale government. In this passage from Chapter 7, he compares the two directly, using metaphor to compare parental power to the power of an absolute monarch:
Unlock with LitCharts A+…or if [a family] must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain, by what has been said before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and differently limited power, both as to time and extent, over those several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave […] he has no legislative power of life and death over any of them, and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he.
Related Themes:
