Another source from which many metaphors have come is war, which has given men some of the most vivid action possible to humankind. Thus we speak of "a war of words," of a person "plunging into the fray," when we mean that he or she joins in a keen argument or quarrel. Or we speak more generally of the "battle of life," picturing the troubles and difficulties of life as the obstacles against which soldiers have to fight in battle. Shakespeare has the expression, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
We have a great many metaphorical expressions taken from painting, sculpture, and other arts. Thus we speak of "moulding" one's own life, picturing ourselves as sculptors, with our lives as the clay to be shaped as we will. Shakespeare has a similar metaphor,--
"There's a divinity which shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."
We may, he says, roughly arrange our way of life, but the final result belongs to a greater artist--God.
Again, we speak of "building our hopes" on a thing, of "moulding" a person's character, of the "canvas of history," imagining history as a picture of things past. We speak of a person describing something very enthusiastically as "painting it in glowing colours," and so on. We also describe the making of new words as "coining them."
But not only are the sentences we make full of metaphors, but most of our words--all, in fact, except the names of the simplest things--are really metaphors themselves. The first makers of such words were speaking "in metaphor," as we should say now; but when the words passed into general use this fact was not noticed.
A great many of the metaphors found in words are the same in many languages. Many of them are taken from agriculture, which is, of course, after hunting, the earliest occupation of all peoples. We can easily think of many words now used in a general sense which originally applied to some simple country practice. We speak of being "goaded" to do a thing when some one persuades or threatens or irritates us into doing it. But a _goad_ was originally a spiked stick used to drive cattle forward. The word _goad_, then, as we use it now, is a real metaphor.
Again, we speak of our feelings being "harrowed." The word _harrow_ first meant, and still means, the drawing of a frame with iron teeth (itself called a _harrow_) over ploughed land to break up the clods. From this meaning it has come to have the figurative meaning of wounding or ruffling the feelings.