It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories. Narrative imagining is a literary capacity indispensable to human cognition generally. This is the first way in which the everyday mind is essentially literary. The prototype of conceptual projection is metaphor , but there are other forms of conceptual projection.
Conceptual projection is, like story, a fundamental instrument of thought.
Rational capacities depend upon it. It is a literary capacity indispensable to human cognition generally. This is the second way in which the everyday mind is essentially literary. The combination of story and projection gives us a basic cognitive instrument used everywhere, from simple parables to complex literary creations like Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. He knew the languages of beasts and birds.