chapter 4 images things may be present or absent, and 'in the absence' of some person or thing, other persons and things are present, and may serve to make the absent as if present. This is an irreducible basis for the construction of significance within the extralinguistic spatial relations and possibilities acknowledged and indicated by language itself.
^/f The word 'substitute' is closely related to what I mean by real metaphor. 'Substitute' is related to 'stand', to 'status' or 'stature', and to 'statue', which last might be taken to mean something standing in the place of someone who for some reason or another is absent. In general, a real metaphor is something that is able to take the place of something else, to make the absent in some sense actually present; it is something already present that has lent itself to being made ' to stand for something else.
Like verbal metaphors, real metaphors are defined by context, but the context is a real spatial one. The transfer of something in order to be something else is a primary real spatial and social spatial act, and so is the consequent construction of spaces and times that specifies and sustains this identity. A stick becomes a hobby horse in the context of the game, that is, both within the space and time of the actual playing out of the game and within the premises and rules that shape and control this actual playing out. A stone becomes the presence of the dead chieftain in a place or precinct, a correlative space at once preserving identity and specifically shaping behaviour. In these elemental conditional terms, either stick or stone might be suitable for any number of uses in other contexts.
Given its suitability to purpose, the identity of a real metaphor is thus radically dependent upon its real spatial context. As we shall see, degrees of separability of a substitute from context, in the sense of its having the same meaning outside its context, are achieved by facture (which makes it evident that a stone was shaped to some purpose), and more specifically by the addition of resemblant \~ elements. Such 'meaning', however, can only be general and provisional. If recognizable eyes have been inscribed on a worked stone, we may see that it is anthropomorphic, and this recognition might be made by anyone unaware of its original definition by context. (By the same token, the more an image is articulated, the more culturally and historically specific it becomes, so that it becomes more distant even as it becomes more referential.)
Real metaphor, placement in social spatial context, asserts identity, and it also inevitably specifies bow the two things are the same. In the case of a simple real metaphor, a stone, many possibilities are raised by the initial statement of identity. At the deepest level, 'this is that' also means 'this may be treated as if it were that'. What permits this to be so in the simplest case is mere presence, which allows something to be faced and addressed. Actual presence, however, has its own conditions and co-ordinates. A stone takes up space, is of a certain size, 'stands', is permanent, and these features of the substitute may also be compared to what has been made present (or has made itself present). A stone may be said to 'face', but it may also be made explicitly to face by location relative to an observer in a precinct, or by the addition of features.
Unless its precinct happens to have survived, or unless it has been distinguished or specified in some way by facture and figuration, a real metaphor z 5 8    simply rej oins the natural forms from which it was separated by human purpose.