Sorry, Fred.

[McCoy] "I'm an English Major, James! Not a Mathematician! [/McCoy] ;-)

I only used X, =, and Y, etc. as substitutes for the parts of a metaphor, so that the discussion wouldn't get stuck on one metaphor or another. I wasn't trying to create a logical syllogism.

More like a word ladder -- where a word morphs to another word one letter at a time (To go from Hate --> Love in four "rungs", you'd go: Hate, Have, Hove, Love), but with images and ideas instead of letters and words.

For example, to go from love as: a rose, rose to thorn, thorn to sword, sword to ploughshare *G*, ploughshare to seed, seed to rose.

Is that a syllogism, or a metamorphoses? Or is there a difference?