In “Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne” (1873), Friedrich Nietzsche offers a fascinating but convoluted theory of the ontogenesis of language and the mentalia involved therein. I argue that his concept of Anschauungsmetapher (perceptual metaphor) allows for a logical explanation of the relationship between mind, world, and language. As I put this text in a dialogue with Aristotle’s and Kant’s philosophies, theories of abduction, and the neuroscientific hypothesis of semantic alignment, I will throw light on Nietzsche’s Anschauungsmetapher as a mental operation of encoding that precedes and enables language.