The conversation on the idea of Universal Metaphor sheds light in many directions. When we see the things of material life as metaphors for higher things we are able to participate at a much deeper level in our experience of physical creation. Of course the idea is only another approach to an old question. Miss Trent showed in The Feminine Universe how the belief in nature as mere epiphenomena of chemistry and biology popularized by the Darwinist mythos robbed the Romantic movement of the ability to see nature in spiritual ways. The post-modernist movement, despite its self-imagined radicalism and skepticism, is really a logical progression of late-19th century popular Darwinism/scientism. To take a very common example, I recently read someone who was advocating (for the several-millionth time) "deconstructing gender". Leaving aside exactly what such deconstruction might consist of, what strikes one about this is not the radical skepticism, but the absolute, unquestioning faith that underlies such a statement. To believe that it is possible to "deconstruct" gender we have to assume that we know exactly what gender is. And of course all "radicals" do assume that. For them gender has two elements and two only: the biological and the human-cultural. Everything that is not determined by biology was "constructed" by human culture and it is, at least theoretically, possible to strip away our human culture and leave our animal nature. We can then (if we choose to) build our own "constructs". But all this is based on a huge and completely arbitrary hypothesis: namely that biology and human construction are all there is. That the universe has no meaning, and that biological gender is not already a metaphor of something higher. In believing this, they completely contradict the entire wisdom of the human race from the earliest known times to the late 19th century. And, ironically, these "multi-culturalist" haters of Western imperialism, are absolutely unable to consider that anything other than modern Western scientistic ideology even might be true. In "deconstructing" the fundamental metaphors of manifest existence, the modern world is taking a huge gamble that modern Western ideologies about the ultimate nature of life and manifestation are correct. But the "radical" has no doubts whatever. Her blind faith in popular scientism is as absolute as that of any Jehovah's Witness in her creed.