The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cratylus, by Plato

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CRATYLUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

Contents

INTRODUCTION

The car track sets for 12 year olds under 10 dollarsCratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of Plato.While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and metaphysicaloriginality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of the Platonicwritings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the piece, whichinterpreters have hitherto not succeeded in dispelling. We need not supposethat Plato used words in order to conceal his thoughts, or that he would havebeen unintelligible to an educated contemporary. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemuswe also find a difficulty in determining the precise aim of the author. Platowrote satires in the form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of othersatirical writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may beassigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness of this speciesof composition; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a state of life andliterature which has passed away. A satire is unmeaning unless we can placeourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in which it waswritten. Had the treatise of Antisthenes upon words, or the speculations ofCratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth century B.C., on the natureof language been preserved to us; or if we had lived at the time, and been“rich enough to attend the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus,” weshould have understood Plato better, and many points which are now attributedto the extravagance of Socrates’ humour would have been found, like theallusions of Aristophanes in the Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists andgrammarians of the day.

For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questionswere beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to otherquestions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a similarmanner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a correctness in words, and werethey given by nature or convention? In the presocratic philosophy mankind hadbeen striving to attain an expression of their ideas, and now they werebeginning to ask themselves whether the expression might not be distinguishedfrom the idea? They were also seeking to distinguish the parts of speech and toenquire into the relation of subject and predicate. Grammar and logic weremoving about somewhere in the depths of the human soul, but they were not yetawakened into consciousness and had not found names for themselves, or terms bywhich they might be expressed. Of these beginnings of the study of language weknow little, and there necessarily arises an obscurity when the surroundings ofsuch a work as the Cratylus are taken away. Moreover, in this, as in most ofthe dialogues of Plato, allowance has to be made for the character of Socrates.For the theory of language can only be propounded by him in a manner which isconsistent with his own profession of ignorance. Hence his ridicule of the newschool of etymology is interspersed with many declarations “that he knowsnothing,” “that he has learned from Euthyphro,” and the like.Even the truest things which he says are depreciated by himself. He professesto be guessing, but the guesses of Plato are better than all the other theoriesof the ancients respecting language put together.

The dialogue hardly derives any light from Plato’s other writings, andstill less from Scholiasts and Neoplatonist writers. Socrates must beinterpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a difficultyin understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other interlocutors inthe dialogue. Does he agree with Cratylus or with Hermogenes, and is he seriousin those fanciful etymologies, extending over more than half the dialogue,which he seems so greatly to relish? Or is he serious in part only; and can weseparate his jest from his earnest?—Sunt bona, sunt quaedum mediocria,sunt mala plura. Most of them are ridiculously bad, and yet among them arefound, as if by accident, principles of philology which are unsurpassed in anyancient writer, and even in advance of any philologer of the last century. Maywe suppose that Plato, like Lucian, has been amusing his fancy by writing acomedy in the form of a prose dialogue? And what is the final result of theenquiry? Is Plato an upholder of the conventional theory of language, which heacknowledges to be imperfect? or does he mean to imply that a perfect languagecan only be based on his own theory of ideas? Or if this latter explanation isrefuted by his silence, then in what relation does his account of languagestand to the rest of his philosophy? Or may we be so bold as to deny theconnexion between them? (For the allusion to the ideas at the end of thedialogue is merely intended to show that we must not put words in the place ofthings or realities, which is a thesis strongly insisted on by Plato in manyother passages)...These are some of the first thoughts which arise in the mindof the reader of the Cratylus. And the consideration of them may form aconvenient introduction to the general subject of the dialogue.

We must not expect all the parts of a dialogue of Plato to tend equally to someclearly-defined end. His idea of literary art is not the absolute proportion ofthe whole, such as we appear to find in a Greek temple or statue; nor shouldhis works be tried by any such standard. They have often the beauty of poetry,but they have also the freedom of conversation. “Words are more plasticthan wax” (Rep.), and may be moulded into any form. He wanders on fromone topic to another, careless of the unity of his work, not fearing any“judge, or spectator, who may recall him to the point” (Theat.),“whither the argument blows we follow” (Rep.). To have determinedbeforehand, as in a modern didactic treatise, the nature and limits of thesubject, would have been fatal to the spirit of enquiry or discovery, which isthe soul of the dialogue...These remarks are applicable to nearly all the worksof Plato, but to the Cratylus and Phaedrus more than any others. See Phaedrus,Introduction.

There is another aspect under which some of the dialogues of Plato may be moretruly viewed:—they are dramatic sketches of an argument. We have foundthat in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno, we arrived at noconclusion—the different sides of the argument were personified in thedifferent speakers; but the victory was not distinctly attributed to any ofthem, nor the truth wholly the property of any. And in the Cratylus we have noreason to assume that Socrates is either wholly right or wholly wrong, or thatPlato, though he evidently inclines to him, had any other aim than that ofpersonifying, in the characters of Hermogenes, Socrates, and Cratylus, thethree theories of language which are respectively maintained by them.

The two subordinate persons of the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, are atthe opposite poles of the argument. But after a while the disciple of theSophist and the follower of Heracleitus are found to be not so far removed fromone another as at first sight appeared; and both show an inclination to acceptthe third view which Socrates interposes between them. First, Hermogenes, thepoor brother of the rich Callias, expounds the doctrine that names areconventional; like the names of slaves, they may be given and altered atpleasure. This is one of those principles which, whether applied to society orlanguage, explains everything and nothing. For in all things there is anelement of convention; but the admission of this does not help us to understandthe rational ground or basis in human nature on which the convention proceeds.Socrates first of all intimates to Hermogenes that his view of language is onlya part of a sophistical whole, and ultimately tends to abolish the distinctionbetween truth and falsehood. Hermogenes is very ready to throw aside thesophistical tenet, and listens with a sort of half admiration, half belief, tothe speculations of Socrates.

Cratylus is of opinion that a name is either a true name or not a name at all.He is unable to conceive of degrees of imitation; a word is either the perfectexpression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound (a fallacy which is stillprevalent among theorizers about the origin of language). He is at once aphilosopher and a sophist; for while wanting to rest language on an immutablebasis, he would deny the possibility of falsehood. He is inclined to derive alltruth from language, and in language he sees reflected the philosophy ofHeracleitus. His views are not like those of Hermogenes, hastily taken up, butare said to be the result of mature consideration, although he is described asstill a young man. With a tenacity characteristic of the Heracleiteanphilosophers, he clings to the doctrine of the flux. (Compare Theaet.) Of thereal Cratylus we know nothing, except that he is recorded by Aristotle to havebeen the friend or teacher of Plato; nor have we any proof that he resembledthe likeness of him in Plato any more than the Critias of Plato is like thereal Critias, or the Euthyphro in this dialogue like the other Euthyphro, thediviner, in the dialogue which is called after him.

Between these two extremes, which have both of them a sophistical character,the view of Socrates is introduced, which is in a manner the union of the two.Language is conventional and also natural, and the true conventional-natural isthe rational. It is a work not of chance, but of art; the dialectician is theartificer of words, and the legislator gives authority to them. They are theexpressions or imitations in sound of things. In a sense, Cratylus is right insaying that things have by nature names; for nature is not opposed either toart or to law. But vocal imitation, like any other copy, may be imperfectlyexecuted; and in this way an element of chance or convention enters in. Thereis much which is accidental or exceptional in language. Some words have hadtheir original meaning so obscured, that they require to be helped out byconvention. But still the true name is that which has a natural meaning. Thusnature, art, chance, all combine in the formation of language. And the threeviews respectively propounded by Hermogenes, Socrates, Cratylus, may bedescribed as the conventional, the artificial or rational, and the natural. Theview of Socrates is the meeting-point of the other two, just as conceptualismis the meeting-point of nominalism and realism.

We can hardly say that Plato was aware of the truth, that “languages arenot made, but grow.” But still, when he says that “the legislatormade language with the dialectician standing on his right hand,” we neednot infer from this that he conceived words, like coins, to be issued from themint of the State. The creator of laws and of social life is naturally regardedas the creator of language, according to Hellenic notions, and the philosopheris his natural advisor. We are not to suppose that the legislator is performingany extraordinary function; he is merely the Eponymus of the State, whoprescribes rules for the dialectician and for all other artists. According to atruly Platonic mode of approaching the subject, language, like virtue in theRepublic, is examined by the analogy of the arts. Words are works of art whichmay be equally made in different materials, and are well made when they have ameaning. Of the process which he thus describes, Plato had probably no verydefinite notion. But he means to express generally that language is the productof intelligence, and that languages belong to States and not to individuals.

A better conception of language could not have been formed in Plato’sage, than that which he attributes to Socrates. Yet many persons have thoughtthat the mind of Plato is more truly seen in the vague realism of Cratylus.This misconception has probably arisen from two causes: first, the desire tobring Plato’s theory of language into accordance with the receiveddoctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression created by Socrateshimself, that he is not in earnest, and is only indulging the fancy of thehour.

1. We shall have occasion to show more at length, in the Introduction to futuredialogues, that the so-called Platonic ideas are only a semi-mythical form, inwhich he attempts to realize abstractions, and that they are replaced in hislater writings by a rational theory of psychology. (See introductions to theMeno and the Sophist.) And in the Cratylus he gives a general account of thenature and origin of language, in which Adam Smith, Rousseau, and other writersof the last century, would have substantially agreed. At the end of thedialogue, he speaks as in the Symposium and Republic of absolute beauty andgood; but he never supposed that they were capable of being embodied in words.Of the names of the ideas, he would have said, as he says of the names of theGods, that we know nothing. Even the realism of Cratylus is not based upon theideas of Plato, but upon the flux of Heracleitus. Here, as in the Sophist andPoliticus, Plato expressly draws attention to the want of agreement in wordsand things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is not theless Plato’s own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, thatPlato’s theory of language is not inconsistent with the rest of hisphilosophy.

2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest. He isdiscoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the“dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.” They are mysteries of which he isspeaking, and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary wisdom.When he is arguing out of Homer, about the names of Hector’s son, or whenhe describes himself as inspired or maddened by Euthyphro, with whom he hasbeen sitting from the early dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias; Phaedr.) andexpresses his intention of yielding to the illusion to-day, and to-morrow hewill go to a priest and be purified, we easily see that his words are not to betaken seriously. In this part of the dialogue his dread of committing impiety,the pretended derivation of his wisdom from another, the extravagance of someof his etymologies, and, in general, the manner in which the fun, fast andfurious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us strongly of the Phaedrus. Thejest is a long one, extending over more than half the dialogue. But then, weremember that the Euthydemus is a still longer jest, in which the irony ispreserved to the very end. There he is parodying the ingenious follies of earlylogic; in the Cratylus he is ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophistsand grammarians. The fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the endof our logic books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found theirway into later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjecturesof Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not provethat they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his conception oflanguage, as much as he is in his conception of mythology. (Compare Phaedrus.)

When the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has abated, Socrates ends, ashe has begun, with a rational explanation of language. Still he preserves his“know nothing” disguise, and himself declares his first notionsabout names to be reckless and ridiculous. Having explained compound words byresolving them into their original elements, he now proceeds to analyse simplewords into the letters of which they are composed. The Socrates who“knows nothing,” here passes into the teacher, the dialectician,the arranger of species. There is nothing in this part of the dialogue which iseither weak or extravagant. Plato is a supporter of the Onomatopoetic theory oflanguage; that is to say, he supposes words to be formed by the imitation ofideas in sounds; he also recognises the effect of time, the influence offoreign languages, the desire of euphony, to be formative principles; and headmits a certain element of chance. But he gives no imitation in all this thathe is preparing the way for the construction of an ideal language. Or that hehas any Eleatic speculation to oppose to the Heracleiteanism of Cratylus.

The theory of language which is propounded in the Cratylus is in accordancewith the later phase of the philosophy of Plato, and would have been regardedby him as in the main true. The dialogue is also a satire on the philologicalfancies of the day. Socrates in pursuit of his vocation as a detector of falseknowledge, lights by accident on the truth. He is guessing, he is dreaming; hehas heard, as he says in the Phaedrus, from another: no one is more surprisedthan himself at his own discoveries. And yet some of his best remarks, as forexample his view of the derivation of Greek words from other languages, or ofthe permutations of letters, or again, his observation that in speaking of theGods we are only speaking of our names of them, occur among these flights ofhumour.

We can imagine a character having a profound insight into the nature of men andthings, and yet hardly dwelling upon them seriously; blending inextricablysense and nonsense; sometimes enveloping in a blaze of jests the most seriousmatters, and then again allowing the truth to peer through; enjoying the flowof his own humour, and puzzling mankind by an ironical exaggeration of theirabsurdities. Such were Aristophanes and Rabelais; such, in a different style,were Sterne, Jean Paul, Hamann,—writers who sometimes becomeunintelligible through the extravagance of their fancies. Such is the characterwhich Plato intends to depict in some of his dialogues as the Silenus Socrates;and through this medium we have to receive our theory of language.

There remains a difficulty which seems to demand a more exact answer: In whatrelation does the satirical or etymological portion of the dialogue stand tothe serious? Granting all that can be said about the provoking irony ofSocrates, about the parody of Euthyphro, or Prodicus, or Antisthenes, how doesthe long catalogue of etymologies furnish any answer to the question ofHermogenes, which is evidently the main thesis of the dialogue: What is thetruth, or correctness, or principle of names?

After illustrating the nature of correctness by the analogy of the arts, andthen, as in the Republic, ironically appealing to the authority of the Homericpoems, Socrates shows that the truth or correctness of names can only beascertained by an appeal to etymology. The truth of names is to be found in theanalysis of their elements. But why does he admit etymologies which are absurd,based on Heracleitean fancies, fourfold interpretations of words, impossibleunions and separations of syllables and letters?

1. The answer to this difficulty has been already anticipated in part: Socratesis not a dogmatic teacher, and therefore he puts on this wild and fancifuldisguise, in order that the truth may be permitted to appear: 2. as Benfeyremarks, an erroneous example may illustrate a principle of language as well asa true one: 3. many of these etymologies, as, for example, that of dikaion, areindicated, by the manner in which Socrates speaks of them, to have been currentin his own age: 4. the philosophy of language had not made such progress aswould have justified Plato in propounding real derivations. Like his masterSocrates, he saw through the hollowness of the incipient sciences of the day,and tries to move in a circle apart from them, laying down the conditions underwhich they are to be pursued, but, as in the Timaeus, cautious and tentative,when he is speaking of actual phenomena. To have made etymologies seriously,would have seemed to him like the interpretation of the myths in the Phaedrus,the task “of a not very fortunate individual, who had a great deal oftime on his hands.” The irony of Socrates places him above and beyond theerrors of his contemporaries.

The Cratylus is full of humour and satirical touches: the inspiration whichcomes from Euthyphro, and his prancing steeds, the light admixture ofquotations from Homer, and the spurious dialectic which is applied to them; thejest about the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus, which is declared on the bestauthority, viz. his own, to be a complete education in grammar and rhetoric;the double explanation of the name Hermogenes, either as “not being inluck,” or “being no speaker;” the dearly-bought wisdom ofCallias, the Lacedaemonian whose name was “Rush,” and, above all,the pleasure which Socrates expresses in his own dangerous discoveries, which“to-morrow he will purge away,” are truly humorous. Whiledelivering a lecture on the philosophy of language, Socrates is also satirizingthe endless fertility of the human mind in spinning arguments out of nothing,and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in support of a theory.Etymology in ancient as in modern times was a favourite recreation; andSocrates makes merry at the expense of the etymologists. The simplicity ofHermogenes, who is ready to believe anything that he is told, heightens theeffect. Socrates in his genial and ironical mood hits right and left at hisadversaries: Ouranos is so called apo tou oran ta ano, which, as somephilosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind; the sophists are by afanciful explanation converted into heroes; “the givers of names werelike some philosophers who fancy that the earth goes round because their headsare always going round.” There is a great deal of “mischief”lurking in the following: “I found myself in greater perplexity aboutjustice than I was before I began to learn;” “The rho in katoptronmust be the addition of some one who cares nothing about truth, but thinks onlyof putting the mouth into shape;” “Tales and falsehoods havegenerally to do with the Tragic and goatish life, and tragedy is the place ofthem.” Several philosophers and sophists are mentioned by name: first,Protagoras and Euthydemus are assailed; then the interpreters of Homer, oipalaioi Omerikoi (compare Arist. Met.) and the Orphic poets are alluded to bythe way; then he discovers a hive of wisdom in the philosophy ofHeracleitus;—the doctrine of the flux is contained in the word ousia (=osia the pushing principle), an anticipation of Anaxagoras is found in psucheand selene. Again, he ridicules the arbitrary methods of pulling out andputting in letters which were in vogue among the philologers of his time; orslightly scoffs at contemporary religious beliefs. Lastly, he is impatient ofhearing from the half-converted Cratylus the doctrine that falsehood canneither be spoken, nor uttered, nor addressed; a piece of sophistry attributedto Gorgias, which reappears in the Sophist. And he proceeds to demolish, withno less delight than he had set up, the Heracleitean theory of language.

In the latter part of the dialogue Socrates becomes more serious, though hedoes not lay aside but rather aggravates his banter of the Heracleiteans, whomhere, as in the Theaetetus, he delights to ridicule. What was the origin ofthis enmity we can hardly determine:—was it due to the natural dislikewhich may be supposed to exist between the “patrons of the flux”and the “friends of the ideas” (Soph.)? or is it to be attributedto the indignation which Plato felt at having wasted his time upon“Cratylus and the doctrines of Heracleitus” in the days of hisyouth? Socrates, touching on some of the characteristic difficulties of earlyGreek philosophy, endeavours to show Cratylus that imitation may be partial orimperfect, that a knowledge of things is higher than a knowledge of names, andthat there can be no knowledge if all things are in a state of transition. ButCratylus, who does not easily apprehend the argument from common sense, remainsunconvinced, and on the whole inclines to his former opinion. Some profoundphilosophical remarks are scattered up and down, admitting of an applicationnot only to language but to knowledge generally; such as the assertion that“consistency is no test of truth:” or again, “If we areover-precise about words, truth will say ‘too late’ to us as to thebelated traveller in Aegina.”

The place of the dialogue in the series cannot be determined with certainty.The style and subject, and the treatment of the character of Socrates, have aclose resemblance to the earlier dialogues, especially to the Phaedrus andEuthydemus. The manner in which the ideas are spoken of at the end of thedialogue, also indicates a comparatively early date. The imaginative element isstill in full vigour; the Socrates of the Cratylus is the Socrates of theApology and Symposium, not yet Platonized; and he describes, as in theTheaetetus, the philosophy of Heracleitus by “unsavoury”similes—he cannot believe that the world is like “a leakyvessel,” or “a man who has a running at the nose”; heattributes the flux of the world to the swimming in some folks’ heads. Onthe other hand, the relation of thought to language is omitted here, but istreated of in the Sophist. These grounds are not sufficient to enable us toarrive at a precise conclusion. But we shall not be far wrong in placing theCratylus about the middle, or at any rate in the first half, of the series.

Cratylus, the Heracleitean philosopher, and Hermogenes, the brother of Callias,have been arguing about names; the former maintaining that they are natural,the latter that they are conventional. Cratylus affirms that his own is a truename, but will not allow that the name of Hermogenes is equally true.Hermogenes asks Socrates to explain to him what Cratylus means; or, far rather,he would like to know, What Socrates himself thinks about the truth orcorrectness of names? Socrates replies, that hard is knowledge, and the natureof names is a considerable part of knowledge: he has never been to hear thefifty-drachma course of Prodicus; and having only attended the single-drachmacourse, he is not competent to give an opinion on such matters. When Cratylusdenies that Hermogenes is a true name, he supposes him to mean that he is not atrue son of Hermes, because he is never in luck. But he would like to have anopen council and to hear both sides.

Hermogenes is of opinion that there is no principle in names; they may bechanged, as we change the names of slaves, whenever we please, and the alteredname is as good as the original one.

You mean to say, for instance, rejoins Socrates, that if I agree to call a mana horse, then a man will be rightly called a horse by me, and a man by the restof the world? But, surely, there is in words a true and a false, as there aretrue and false propositions. If a whole proposition be true or false, then theparts of a proposition may be true or false, and the least parts as well as thegreatest; and the least parts are names, and therefore names may be true orfalse. Would Hermogenes maintain that anybody may give a name to anything, andas many names as he pleases; and would all these names be always true at thetime of giving them? Hermogenes replies that this is the only way in which hecan conceive that names are correct; and he appeals to the practice ofdifferent nations, and of the different Hellenic tribes, in confirmation of hisview. Socrates asks, whether the things differ as the words which representthem differ:—Are we to maintain with Protagoras, that what appears is?Hermogenes has always been puzzled about this, but acknowledges, when he ispressed by Socrates, that there are a few very good men in the world, and agreat many very bad; and the very good are the wise, and the very bad are thefoolish; and this is not mere appearance but reality. Nor is he disposed to saywith Euthydemus, that all things equally and always belong to all men; in thatcase, again, there would be no distinction between bad and good men. But then,the only remaining possibility is, that all things have their several distinctnatures, and are independent of our notions about them. And not only things,but actions, have distinct natures, and are done by different processes. Thereis a natural way of cutting or burning, and a natural instrument with which mencut or burn, and any other way will fail;—this is true of all actions.And speaking is a kind of action, and naming is a kind of speaking, and we mustname according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument. We cut witha knife, we pierce with an awl, we weave with a shuttle, we name with a name.And as a shuttle separates the warp from the woof, so a name distinguishes thenatures of things. The weaver will use the shuttle well,—that is, like aweaver; and the teacher will use the name well,—that is, like a teacher.The shuttle will be made by the carpenter; the awl by the smith or skilledperson. But who makes a name? Does not the law give names, and does not theteacher receive them from the legislator? He is the skilled person who makesthem, and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how does the carpentermake or repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at theideal which he has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work differ, soought the instruments which make them to differ. The several kinds of shuttlesought to answer in material and form to the several kinds of webs. And thelegislator ought to know the different materials and forms of which names aremade in Hellas and other countries. But who is to be the judge of the properform? The judge of shuttles is the weaver who uses them; the judge of lyres isthe player of the lyre; the judge of ships is the pilot. And will not the judgewho is able to direct the legislator in his work of naming, be he who knows howto use the names—he who can ask and answer questions—in short, thedialectician? The pilot directs the carpenter how to make the rudder, and thedialectician directs the legislator how he is to impose names; for to expressthe ideal forms of things in syllables and letters is not the easy task,Hermogenes, which you imagine.

“I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me this naturalcorrectness of names.”

Indeed I cannot; but I see that you have advanced; for you now admit that thereis a correctness of names, and that not every one can give a name. But what isthe nature of this correctness or truth, you must learn from the Sophists, ofwhom your brother Callias has bought his reputation for wisdom rather dearly;and since they require to be paid, you, having no money, had better learn fromhim at second-hand. “Well, but I have just given up Protagoras, and Ishould be inconsistent in going to learn of him.” Then if you reject himyou may learn of the poets, and in particular of Homer, who distinguishes thenames given by Gods and men to the same things, as in the verse about the riverGod who fought with Hephaestus, “whom the Gods call Xanthus, and men callScamander;” or in the lines in which he mentions the bird which the Godscall “Chalcis,” and men “Cymindis;” or the hill whichmen call “Batieia,” and the Gods “Myrinna’sTomb.” Here is an important lesson; for the Gods must of course be rightin their use of names. And this is not the only truth about philology which maybe learnt from Homer. Does he not say that Hector’s son had twonames—

“Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others Astyanax”?

Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the other name wasconferred by the women? And which are more likely to be right—the wiseror the less wise, the men or the women? Homer evidently agreed with the men:and of the name given by them he offers an explanation;—the boy wascalled Astyanax (“king of the city”), because his father saved thecity. The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are really the same,—theone means a king, and the other is “a holder or possessor.” For asthe lion’s whelp may be called a lion, or the horse’s foal a foal,so the son of a king may be called a king. But if the horse had produced acalf, then that would be called a calf. Whether the syllables of a name are thesame or not makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained. For example;the names of letters, whether vowels or consonants, do not correspond to theirsounds, with the exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The name Betahas three letters added to the sound—and yet this does not alter thesense of the word, or prevent the whole name having the value which thelegislator intended. And the same may be said of a king and the son of a king,who like other animals resemble each other in the course of nature; the wordsby which they are signified may be disguised, and yet amid differences of soundthe etymologist may recognise the same notion, just as the physician recognisesthe power of the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell.Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, but they have the same meaning;and Agis (leader) is altogether different in sound from Polemarchus (chief inwar), or Eupolemus (good warrior); but the two words present the same idea ofleader or general, like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equallydenote a physician. The son succeeds the father as the foal succeeds the horse,but when, out of the course of nature, a prodigy occurs, and the offspring nolonger resembles the parent, then the names no longer agree. This may beillustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son Orestes, of whom the formerhas a name significant of his patience at the siege of Troy; while the name ofthe latter indicates his savage, man-of-the-mountain nature. Atreus again, forhis murder of Chrysippus, and his cruelty to Thyestes, is rightly named Atreus,which, to the eye of the etymologist, is ateros (destructive), ateires(stubborn), atreotos (fearless); and Pelops is o ta pelas oron (he who seeswhat is near only), because in his eagerness to win Hippodamia, he wasunconscious of the remoter consequences which the murder of Myrtilus wouldentail upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly changed, offers twoetymologies; either apo tes tou lithou talanteias, or apo tou talantaton einai,signifying at once the hanging of the stone over his head in the world below,and the misery which he brought upon his country. And the name of his father,Zeus, Dios, Zenos, has an excellent meaning, though hard to be understood,because really a sentence which is divided into two parts (Zeus, Dios). For he,being the lord and king of all, is the author of our being, and in him alllive: this is implied in the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put togetherand interpreted is di on ze panta. There may, at first sight, appear to be someirreverence in calling him the son of Cronos, who is a proverb for stupidity;but the meaning is that Zeus himself is the son of a mighty intellect; Kronos,quasi koros, not in the sense of a youth, but quasi to katharon kai akeratontou nou—the pure and garnished mind, which in turn is begotten of Uranus,who is so called apo tou oran ta ano, from looking upwards; which, asphilosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind. The earlier portion ofHesiod’s genealogy has escaped my memory, or I would try more conclusionsof the same sort. “You talk like an oracle.” I caught the infectionfrom Euthyphro, who gave me a long lecture which began at dawn, and has notonly entered into my ears, but filled my soul, and my intention is to yield tothe inspiration to-day; and to-morrow I will be exorcised by some priest orsophist. “Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.” Now that we have ageneral notion, how shall we proceed? What names will afford the most crucialtest of natural fitness? Those of heroes and ordinary men are often deceptive,because they are patronymics or expressions of a wish; let us try gods anddemi-gods. Gods are so called, apo tou thein, from the verb “torun;” because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and theybeing the original gods of the Hellenes, as they still are of the Barbarians,their name is given to all Gods. The demons are the golden race of Hesiod, andby golden he means not literally golden, but good; and they are called demons,quasi daemones, which in old Attic was used for daimones—good men arewell said to become daimones when they die, because they are knowing. Eros(with an epsilon) is the same word as eros (with an eta): “the sons ofGod saw the daughters of men that they were fair;” or perhaps they were aspecies of sophists or rhetoricians, and so called apo tou erotan, or eirein,from their habit of spinning questions; for eirein is equivalent to legein. Iget all this from Euthyphro; and now a new and ingenious idea comes into mymind, and, if I am not careful, I shall be wiser than I ought to be byto-morrow’s dawn. My idea is, that we may put in and pull out letters atpleasure and alter the accents (as, for example, Dii philos may be turned intoDiphilos), and we may make words into sentences and sentences into words. Thename anthrotos is a case in point, for a letter has been omitted and the accentchanged; the original meaning being o anathron a opopen—he who looks upat what he sees. Psuche may be thought to be the reviving, or refreshing, oranimating principle—e anapsuchousa to soma; but I am afraid thatEuthyphro and his disciples will scorn this derivation, and I must findanother: shall we identify the soul with the “ordering mind” ofAnaxagoras, and say that psuche, quasi phuseche = e phusin echei orochei?—this might easily be refined into psyche. “That is a moreartistic etymology.”

After psuche follows soma; this, by a slight permutation, may be either = (1)the “grave” of the soul, or (2) may mean “that by which thesoul signifies (semainei) her wishes.” But more probably, the word isOrphic, and simply denotes that the body is the place of ward in which the soulsuffers the penalty of sin,—en o sozetai. “I should like to hearsome more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one ofZeus.” The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves;but these are unknown to us. Less true are those by which we propitiate them,as men say in prayers, “May he graciously receive any name by which Icall him.” And to avoid offence, I should like to let them knowbeforehand that we are not presuming to enquire about them, but only about thenames which they usually bear. Let us begin with Hestia. What did he mean whogave the name Hestia? “That is a very difficult question.” O, mydear Hermogenes, I believe that there was a power of philosophy and talk amongthe first inventors of names, both in our own and in other languages; for evenin foreign words a principle is discernible. Hestia is the same with esia,which is an old form of ousia, and means the first principle of things: thisagrees with the fact that to Hestia the first sacrifices are offered. There isalso another reading—osia, which implies that “pushing”(othoun) is the first principle of all things. And here I seem to discover adelicate allusion to the flux of Heracleitus—that antediluvianphilosopher who cannot walk twice in the same stream; and this flux of his mayaccomplish yet greater marvels. For the names Cronos and Rhea cannot have beenaccidental; the giver of them must have known something about the doctrine ofHeracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence in the words ofHesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, “the origin of Gods;” and in theverse of Orpheus, in which he describes Oceanus espousing his sister Tethys.Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring—to diattomenon kaiethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the feet, because you cannotwalk on the sea—the epsilon is inserted by way of ornament; or perhapsthe name may have been originally polleidon, meaning, that the God knew manythings (polla eidos): he may also be the shaker, apo tou seiein,—in thiscase, pi and delta have been added. Pluto is connected with ploutos, becausewealth comes out of the earth; or the word may be a euphemism for Hades, whichis usually derived apo tou aeidous, because the God is concerned with theinvisible. But the name Hades was really given him from his knowing (eidenai)all good things. Men in general are foolishly afraid of him, and talk withhorror of the world below from which no one may return. The reason why hissubjects never wish to come back, even if they could, is that the God enchainsthem by the strongest of spells, namely by the desire of virtue, which theyhope to obtain by constant association with him. He is the perfect andaccomplished Sophist and the great benefactor of the other world; for he hasmuch more than he wants there, and hence he is called Pluto or the rich. Hewill have nothing to do with the souls of men while in the body, because hecannot work his will with them so long as they are confused and entangled byfleshly lusts. Demeter is the mother and giver of food—e didousa metertes edodes. Here is erate tis, or perhaps the legislator may have been thinkingof the weather, and has merely transposed the letters of the word aer.Pherephatta, that word of awe, is pheretapha, which is only an euphoniouscontraction of e tou pheromenou ephaptomene,—all things are in motion,and she in her wisdom moves with them, and the wise God Hades consorts withher—there is nothing very terrible in this, any more than in the herother appellation Persephone, which is also significant of her wisdom (sophe).Apollo is another name, which is supposed to have some dreadful meaning, but issusceptible of at least four perfectly innocent explanations. First, he is thepurifier or purger or absolver (apolouon); secondly, he is the true diviner,Aplos, as he is called in the Thessalian dialect (aplos = aplous, sincere);thirdly, he is the archer (aei ballon), always shooting; or again, supposingalpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes equivalent to ama polon, which pointsto both his musical and his heavenly attributes; for there is a “movingtogether” alike in music and in the harmony of the spheres. The secondlambda is inserted in order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. TheMuses are so called—apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is namedfrom her willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget(lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy well-balanced nature, dia toartemes, or as aretes istor; or as a lover of virginity, aroton misesasa. Oneof these explanations is probably true,—perhaps all of them. Dionysus iso didous ton oinon, and oinos is quasi oionous because wine makes those think(oiesthai) that they have a mind (nous) who have none. The establishedderivation of Aphrodite dia ten tou athrou genesin may be accepted on theauthority of Hesiod. Again, there is the name of Pallas, or Athene, which we,who are Athenians, must not forget. Pallas is derived from armeddances—apo tou pallein ta opla. For Athene we must turn to theallegorical interpreters of Homer, who make the name equivalent to theonoe, orpossibly the word was originally ethonoe and signified moral intelligence (enethei noesis). Hephaestus, again, is the lord of light—o tou phaeosistor. This is a good notion; and, to prevent any other getting into our heads,let us go on to Ares. He is the manly one (arren), or the unchangeable one(arratos). Enough of the Gods; for, by the Gods, I am afraid of them; but ifyou suggest other words, you will see how the horses of Euthyphro prance.“Only one more God; tell me about my godfather Hermes.” He isermeneus, the messenger or cheater or thief or bargainer; or o eirein momenos,that is, eiremes or ermes—the speaker or contriver of speeches.“Well said Cratylus, then, that I am no son of Hermes.” Pan, as theson of Hermes, is speech or the brother of speech, and is called Pan becausespeech indicates everything—o pan menuon. He has two forms, a true and afalse; and is in the upper part smooth, and in the lower part shaggy. He is thegoat of Tragedy, in which there are plenty of falsehoods.

“Will you go on to the elements—sun, moon, stars, earth, aether,air, fire, water, seasons, years?” Very good: and which shall I takefirst? Let us begin with elios, or the sun. The Doric form elios helps us tosee that he is so called because at his rising he gathers (alizei) mentogether, or because he rolls about (eilei) the earth, or because he variegates(aiolei = poikillei) the earth. Selene is an anticipation of Anaxagoras, beinga contraction of selaenoneoaeia, the light (selas) which is ever old and new,and which, as Anaxagoras says, is borrowed from the sun; the name washarmonized into selanaia, a form which is still in use. “That is a truedithyrambic name.” Meis is so called apo tou meiousthai, from sufferingdiminution, and astron is from astrape (lightning), which is an improvement ofanastrope, that which turns the eyes inside out. “How do you explain purn udor?” I suspect that pur, which, like udor n kuon, is found inPhrygian, is a foreign word; for the Hellenes have borrowed much from thebarbarians, and I always resort to this theory of a foreign origin when I am ata loss. Aer may be explained, oti airei ta apo tes ges; or, oti aei rei; or,oti pneuma ex autou ginetai (compare the poetic word aetai). So aither quasiaeitheer oti aei thei peri ton aera: ge, gaia quasi genneteira (compare theHomeric form gegaasi); ora (with an omega), or, according to the old Attic formora (with an omicron), is derived apo tou orizein, because it divides the year;eniautos and etos are the same thought—o en eauto etazon, cut into twoparts, en eauto and etazon, like di on ze into Dios and Zenos.

“You make surprising progress.” True; I am run away with, and amnot even yet at my utmost speed. “I should like very much to hear youraccount of the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in thosecharming words, wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest?” To explainall that will be a serious business; still, as I have put on the lion’sskin, appearances must be maintained. My opinion is, that primitive men werelike some modern philosophers, who, by always going round in their search afterthe nature of things, become dizzy; and this phenomenon, which was really inthemselves, they imagined to take place in the external world. You have nodoubt remarked, that the doctrine of the universal flux, or generation ofthings, is indicated in names. “No, I never did.” Phronesis is onlyphoras kai rou noesis, or perhaps phoras onesis, and in any case is connectedwith pheresthai; gnome is gones skepsis kai nomesis; noesis is neou orgignomenon esis; the word neos implies that creation is always goingon—the original form was neoesis; sophrosune is soteria phroneseos;episteme is e epomene tois pragmasin—the faculty which keeps close,neither anticipating nor lagging behind; sunesis is equivalent to sunienai,sumporeuesthai ten psuche, and is a kind of conclusion—sullogismos tis,akin therefore in idea to episteme; sophia is very difficult, and has a foreignlook—the meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things, and may beillustrated by the poetical esuthe and the Lacedaemonian proper name Sous, orRush; agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,—for all things are inmotion, and some are swifter than others: dikaiosune is clearly e tou dikaiousunesis. The word dikaion is more troublesome, and appears to mean the subtlepenetrating power which, as the lovers of motion say, preserves all things, andis the cause of all things, quasi diaion going through—the letter kappabeing inserted for the sake of euphony. This is a great mystery which has beenconfided to me; but when I ask for an explanation I am thought obtrusive, andanother derivation is proposed to me. Justice is said to be o kaion, or thesun; and when I joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered,“What, is there no justice when the sun is down?” And when Ientreat my questioner to tell me his own opinion, he replies, that justice isfire in the abstract, or heat in the abstract; which is not very intelligible.Others laugh at such notions, and say with Anaxagoras, that justice is theordering mind. “I think that some one must have told you this.” Andnot the rest? Let me proceed then, in the hope of proving to you myoriginality. Andreia is quasi anpeia quasi e ano roe, the stream which flowsupwards, and is opposed to injustice, which clearly hinders the principle ofpenetration; arren and aner have a similar derivation; gune is the same asgone; thelu is derived apo tes theles, because the teat makes things flourish(tethelenai), and the word thallein itself implies increase of youth, which isswift and sudden ever (thein and allesthai). I am getting over the ground fast:but much has still to be explained. There is techne, for instance. This, by anaphaeresis of tau and an epenthesis of omicron in two places, may be identifiedwith echonoe, and signifies “that which has mind.”

“A very poor etymology.” Yes; but you must remember that alllanguage is in process of change; letters are taken in and put out for the sakeof euphony, and time is also a great alterer of words. For example, whatbusiness has the letter rho in the word katoptron, or the letter sigma in theword sphigx? The additions are often such that it is impossible to make out theoriginal word; and yet, if you may put in and pull out, as you like, any nameis equally good for any object. The fact is, that great dictators of literaturelike yourself should observe the rules of moderation. “I will do mybest.” But do not be too much of a precisian, or you will paralyze me. Ifyou will let me add mechane, apo tou mekous, which means polu, and anein, Ishall be at the summit of my powers, from which elevation I will examine thetwo words kakia and arete. The first is easily explained in accordance withwhat has preceded; for all things being in a flux, kakia is to kakos ion. Thisderivation is illustrated by the word deilia, which ought to have come afterandreia, and may be regarded as o lian desmos tes psuches, just as aporiasignifies an impediment to motion (from alpha not, and poreuesthai to go), andarete is euporia, which is the opposite of this—the everflowing (aeireousa or aeireite), or the eligible, quasi airete. You will think that I aminventing, but I say that if kakia is right, then arete is also right. But whatis kakon? That is a very obscure word, to which I can only apply my old notionand declare that kakon is a foreign word. Next, let us proceed to kalon,aischron. The latter is doubtless contracted from aeischoroun, quasi aei ischonroun. The inventor of words being a patron of the flux, was a great enemy tostagnation. Kalon is to kaloun ta pragmata—this is mind (nous ordianoia); which is also the principle of beauty; and which doing the works ofbeauty, is therefore rightly called the beautiful. The meaning of sumpheron isexplained by previous examples;—like episteme, signifying that the soulmoves in harmony with the world (sumphora, sumpheronta). Kerdos is to pasikerannumenon—that which mingles with all things: lusiteloun is equivalentto to tes phoras luon to telos, and is not to be taken in the vulgar sense ofgainful, but rather in that of swift, being the principle which makes motionimmortal and unceasing; ophelimon is apo tou ophellein—that which givesincrease: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin. Blaberon is toblamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou—that which injures or seeks to bindthe stream. The proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too much of amouthful—like a prelude on the flute in honour of Athene. The wordzemiodes is difficult; great changes, as I was saying, have been made in words,and even a small change will alter their meaning very much. The word deon isone of these disguised words. You know that according to the old pronunciation,which is especially affected by the women, who are great conservatives, iotaand delta were used where we should now use eta and zeta: for example, what wenow call emera was formerly called imera; and this shows the meaning of theword to have been “the desired one coming after night,” and not, asis often supposed, “that which makes things gentle” (emera). Soagain, zugon is duogon, quasi desis duein eis agogen—(the binding of twotogether for the purpose of drawing.) Deon, as ordinarily written, has an evilsense, signifying the chain (desmos) or hindrance of motion; but in its ancientform dion is expressive of good, quasi diion, that which penetrates or goesthrough all. Zemiodes is really demiodes, and means that which binds motion(dounti to ion): edone is e pros ten onrsin teinousa praxis—the delta isan insertion: lupe is derived apo tes dialuseos tou somatos: ania is from alphaand ienai, to go: algedon is a foreign word, and is so called apo tou algeinou:odune is apo tes enduseos tes lupes: achthedon is in its very sound a burden:chapa expresses the flow of soul: terpsis is apo tou terpnou, and terpnon isproperly erpnon, because the sensation of pleasure is likened to a breath(pnoe) which creeps (erpei) through the soul: euphrosune is named frompheresthai, because the soul moves in harmony with nature: epithumia is e epiton thumon iousa dunamis: thumos is apo tes thuseos tes psuches:imeros—oti eimenos pei e psuche: pothos, the desire which is in anotherplace, allothi pou: eros was anciently esros, and so called because it flowsinto (esrei) the soul from without: doxa is e dioxis tou eidenai, or expressesthe shooting from a bow (toxon). The latter etymology is confirmed by the wordsboulesthai, boule, aboulia, which all have to do with shooting (bole): andsimilarly oiesis is nothing but the movement (oisis) of the soul towardsessence. Ekousion is to eikon—the yielding—anagke is e an agkeiousa, the passage through ravines which impede motion: aletheia is theia ale,divine motion. Pseudos is the opposite of this, implying the principle ofconstraint and forced repose, which is expressed under the figure of sleep, toeudon; the psi is an addition. Onoma, a name, affirms the real existence ofthat which is sought after—on ou masma estin. On and ousia are only ionwith an iota broken off; and ouk on is ouk ion. “And what are ion, reon,doun?” One way of explaining them has been already suggested—theymay be of foreign origin; and possibly this is the true answer. But mereantiquity may often prevent our recognizing words, after all the complicationswhich they have undergone; and we must remember that however far we carry backour analysis some ultimate elements or roots will remain which can be nofurther analyzed. For example; the word agathos was supposed by us to be acompound of agastos and thoos, and probably thoos may be further resolvable.But if we take a word of which no further resolution seems attainable, we mayfairly conclude that we have reached one of these original elements, and thetruth of such a word must be tested by some new method. Will you help me in thesearch?

All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature ofthings; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from theprimary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And let me askanother question,—If we had no faculty of speech, how should wecommunicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and dumb?The elevation of our hands would mean lightness—heaviness would beexpressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be described bya similar movement of our own frames. The body can only express anything byimitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the body.But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not yet a name, because people mayimitate sheep or goats without naming them. What, then, is a name? In the firstplace, a name is not a musical, or, secondly, a pictorial imitation, but animitation of that kind which expresses the nature of a thing; and is theinvention not of a musician, or of a painter, but of a namer.

And now, I think that we may consider the names about which you were asking.The way to analyze them will be by going back to the letters, or primaryelements of which they are composed. First, we separate the alphabet intoclasses of letters, distinguishing the consonants, mutes, vowels, andsemivowels; and when we have learnt them singly, we shall learn to know them intheir various combinations of two or more letters; just as the painter knowshow to use either a single colour, or a combination of colours. And like thepainter, we may apply letters to the expression of objects, and form them intosyllables; and these again into words, until the picture or figure—thatis, language—is completed. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves,but I mean to say that this was the way in which the ancients framed language.And this leads me to consider whether the primary as well as the secondaryelements are rightly given. I may remark, as I was saying about the Gods, thatwe can only attain to conjecture of them. But still we insist that ours is thetrue and only method of discovery; otherwise we must have recourse, like thetragic poets, to a Deus ex machina, and say that God gave the first names, andtherefore they are right; or that the barbarians are older than we are, andthat we learnt of them; or that antiquity has cast a veil over the truth. Yetall these are not reasons; they are only ingenious excuses for having noreasons.

I will freely impart to you my own notions, though they are somewhatcrude:—the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument whichthe legislator has employed to express all motion or kinesis. (I ought toexplain that kinesis is just iesis (going), for the letter eta was unknown tothe ancients; and the root, kiein, is a foreign form of ienai: of kinesis oreisis, the opposite is stasis). This use of rho is evident in the wordstremble, break, crush, crumble, and the like; the imposer of names perceivedthat the tongue is most agitated in the pronunciation of this letter, just ashe used iota to express the subtle power which penetrates through all things.The letters phi, psi, sigma, zeta, which require a great deal of wind, areemployed in the imitation of such notions as shivering, seething, shaking, andin general of what is windy. The letters delta and tau convey the idea ofbinding and rest in a place: the lambda denotes smoothness, as in the wordsslip, sleek, sleep, and the like. But when the slipping tongue is detained bythe heavier sound of gamma, then arises the notion of a glutinous clammynature: nu is sounded from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha is theexpression of size; eta of length; omicron of roundness, and therefore there isplenty of omicron in the word goggulon. That is my view, Hermogenes, of thecorrectness of names; and I should like to hear what Cratylus would say.“But, Socrates, as I was telling you, Cratylus mystifies me; I shouldlike to ask him, in your presence, what he means by the fitness ofnames?” To this appeal, Cratylus replies “that he cannot explain soimportant a subject all in a moment.” “No, but you may ‘addlittle to little,’ as Hesiod says.” Socrates here interposes hisown request, that Cratylus will give some account of his theory. Hermogenes andhimself are mere sciolists, but Cratylus has reflected on these matters, andhas had teachers. Cratylus replies in the words of Achilles:“‘Illustrious Ajax, you have spoken in all things much to mymind,’ whether Euthyphro, or some Muse inhabiting your own breast, wasthe inspirer.” Socrates replies, that he is afraid of beingself-deceived, and therefore he must “look fore and aft,” as Homerremarks. Does not Cratylus agree with him that names teach us the nature ofthings? “Yes.” And naming is an art, and the artists arelegislators, and like artists in general, some of them are better and some ofthem are worse than others, and give better or worse laws, and make better orworse names. Cratylus cannot admit that one name is better than another; theyare either true names, or they are not names at all; and when he is asked aboutthe name of Hermogenes, who is acknowledged to have no luck in him, he affirmsthis to be the name of somebody else. Socrates supposes him to mean thatfalsehood is impossible, to which his own answer would be, that there has neverbeen a lack of liars. Cratylus presses him with the old sophistical argument,that falsehood is saying that which is not, and therefore sayingnothing;—you cannot utter the word which is not. Socrates complains thatthis argument is too subtle for an old man to understand: Suppose a personaddressing Cratylus were to say, Hail, Athenian Stranger, Hermogenes! wouldthese words be true or false? “I should say that they would be mereunmeaning sounds, like the hammering of a brass pot.” But you wouldacknowledge that names, as well as pictures, are imitations, and also thatpictures may give a right or wrong representation of a man or woman:—whymay not names then equally give a representation true and right or false andwrong? Cratylus admits that pictures may give a true or false representation,but denies that names can. Socrates argues, that he may go up to a man and say“this is year picture,” and again, he may go and say to him“this is your name”—in the one case appealing to his sense ofsight, and in the other to his sense of hearing;—may he not?“Yes.” Then you will admit that there is a right or a wrongassignment of names, and if of names, then of verbs and nouns; and if of verbsand nouns, then of the sentences which are made up of them; and comparing nounsto pictures, you may give them all the appropriate sounds, or only some ofthem. And as he who gives all the colours makes a good picture, and he whogives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but still a picture; so he whogives all the sounds makes a good name, and he who gives only some of them, abad or imperfect one, but a name still. The artist of names, that is, thelegislator, may be a good or he may be a bad artist. “Yes, Socrates, butthe cases are not parallel; for if you subtract or misplace a letter, the nameceases to be a name.” Socrates admits that the number 10, if an unit issubtracted, would cease to be 10, but denies that names are of this purelyquantitative nature. Suppose that there are two objects—Cratylus and theimage of Cratylus; and let us imagine that some God makes them perfectly alike,both in their outward form and in their inner nature and qualities: then therewill be two Cratyluses, and not merely Cratylus and the image of Cratylus. Butan image in fact always falls short in some degree of the original, and ifimages are not exact counterparts, why should names be? if they were, theywould be the doubles of their originals, and indistinguishable from them; andhow ridiculous would this be! Cratylus admits the truth of Socrates’remark. But then Socrates rejoins, he should have the courage to acknowledgethat letters may be wrongly inserted in a noun, or a noun in a sentence; andyet the noun or the sentence may retain a meaning. Better to admit this, thatwe may not be punished like the traveller in Egina who goes about at night, andthat Truth herself may not say to us, “Too late.” And, errorsexcepted, we may still affirm that a name to be correct must have properletters, which bear a resemblance to the thing signified. I must remind you ofwhat Hermogenes and I were saying about the letter rho accent, which was heldto be expressive of motion and hardness, as lambda is of smoothness;—andthis you will admit to be their natural meaning. But then, why do the Eritreanscall that skleroter which we call sklerotes? We can understand one another,although the letter rho accent is not equivalent to the letter s: why is this?You reply, because the two letters are sufficiently alike for the purpose ofexpressing motion. Well, then, there is the letter lambda; what business hasthis in a word meaning hardness? “Why, Socrates, I retort upon you, thatwe put in and pull out letters at pleasure.” And the explanation of thisis custom or agreement: we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s anda convention may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. How could therebe names for all the numbers unless you allow that convention is used?Imitation is a poor thing, and has to be supplemented by convention, which isanother poor thing; although I agree with you in thinking that the most perfectform of language is found only where there is a perfect correspondence of soundand meaning. But let me ask you what is the use and force of names? “Theuse of names, Socrates, is to inform, and he who knows names knowsthings.” Do you mean that the discovery of names is the same as thediscovery of things? “Yes.” But do you not see that there is adegree of deception about names? He who first gave names, gave them accordingto his conception, and that may have been erroneous. “But then, why,Socrates, is language so consistent? all words have the same laws.” Mereconsistency is no test of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, theremay be a flaw at the beginning, and yet the conclusion may follow consistently.And, therefore, a wise man will take especial care of first principles. But arewords really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise which signifyrest as which signify motion? There is episteme, which is connected withstasis, as mneme is with meno. Bebaion, again, is the expression of station andposition; istoria is clearly descriptive of the stopping istanai of the stream;piston indicates the cessation of motion; and there are many words having a badsense, which are connected with ideas of motion, such as sumphora, amartia,etc.: amathia, again, might be explained, as e ama theo iontos poreia, andakolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the bad names are framed on thesame principle as the good, and other examples might be given, which wouldfavour a theory of rest rather than of motion. “Yes; but the greaternumber of words express motion.” Are we to count them, Cratylus; and iscorrectness of names to be determined by the voice of a majority?

Here is another point: we were saying that the legislator gives names; andtherefore we must suppose that he knows the things which he names: but how canhe have learnt things from names before there were any names? “I believe,Socrates, that some power more than human first gave things their names, andthat these were necessarily true names.” Then how came the giver of namesto contradict himself, and to make some names expressive of rest, and others ofmotion? “I do not suppose that he did make them both.” Then whichdid he make—those which are expressive of rest, or those which areexpressive of motion?...But if some names are true and others false, we canonly decide between them, not by counting words, but by appealing to things.And, if so, we must allow that things may be known without names; for names, aswe have several times admitted, are the images of things; and the higherknowledge is of things, and is not to be derived from names; and though I donot doubt that the inventors of language gave names, under the idea that allthings are in a state of motion and flux, I believe that they were mistaken;and that having fallen into a whirlpool themselves, they are trying to drag usafter them. For is there not a true beauty and a true good, which is alwaysbeautiful and always good? Can the thing beauty be vanishing away from us whilethe words are yet in our mouths? And they could not be known by any one if theyare always passing away—for if they are always passing away, the observerhas no opportunity of observing their state. Whether the doctrine of the fluxor of the eternal nature be the truer, is hard to determine. But no man ofsense will put himself, or the education of his mind, in the power of names: hewill not condemn himself to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe thateverything is in a flux like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world isa man who has a running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, butis also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would have you reflect whileyou are young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me.“I have thought, Socrates, and after a good deal of thinking I incline toHeracleitus.” Then another day, my friend, you shall give me a lesson.“Very good, Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study thesethings yourself.”

We may now consider (I) how far Plato in the Cratylus has discovered the trueprinciples of language, and then (II) proceed to compare modern speculationsrespecting the origin and nature of language with the anticipations of hisgenius.

I. (1) Plato is aware that language is not the work of chance; nor does he denythat there is a natural fitness in names. He only insists that this naturalfitness shall be intelligibly explained. But he has no idea that language is anatural organism. He would have heard with surprise that languages are thecommon work of whole nations in a primitive or semi-barbarous age. How, hewould probably have argued, could men devoid of art have contrived a structureof such complexity? No answer could have been given to this question, either inancient or in modern times, until the nature of primitive antiquity had beenthoroughly studied, and the instincts of man had been shown to exist in greaterforce, when his state approaches more nearly to that of children or animals.The philosophers of the last century, after their manner, would have vainlyendeavoured to trace the process by which proper names were converted intocommon, and would have shown how the last effort of abstraction inventedprepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved that languagemust have had a divine origin, because in childhood, while the organs arepliable, the intelligence is wanting, and when the intelligence is able toframe conceptions, the organs are no longer able to express them. Or, as othershave said: Man is man because he has the gift of speech; and he could not haveinvented that which he is. But this would have been an “argument toosubtle” for Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the originof language “as an excuse for not giving a reason,” which hecompares to the introduction of the “Deus ex machina” by the tragicpoets when they have to solve a difficulty; thus anticipating many moderncontroversies in which the primary agency of the divine Being is confused withthe secondary cause; and God is assumed to have worked a miracle in order tofill up a lacuna in human knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)

Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art entersinto language. The creative power abating is supplemented by a mechanicalprocess. “Languages are not made but grow,” but they are made aswell as grow; bursting into life like a plant or a flower, they are alsocapable of being trained and improved and engrafted upon one another. Thechange in them is effected in earlier ages by musical and euphonicimprovements, at a later stage by the influence of grammar and logic, and bythe poetical and literary use of words. They develope rapidly in childhood, andwhen they are full grown and set they may still put forth intellectual powers,like the mind in the body, or rather we may say that the nobler use of languageonly begins when the frame-work is complete. The savage or primitive man, inwhom the natural instinct is strongest, is also the greatest improver of theforms of language. He is the poet or maker of words, as in civilised ages thedialectician is the definer or distinguisher of them. The latter calls thesecond world of abstract terms into existence, as the former has created thepicture sounds which represent natural objects or processes. Poetry andphilosophy—these two, are the two great formative principles of language,when they have passed their first stage, of which, as of the first invention ofthe arts in general, we only entertain conjecture. And mythology is a linkbetween them, connecting the visible and invisible, until at length thesensuous exterior falls away, and the severance of the inner and outer world,of the idea and the object of sense, becomes complete. At a later period, logicand grammar, sister arts, preserve and enlarge the decaying instinct oflanguage, by rule and method, which they gather from analysis and observation.

(2) There is no trace in any of Plato’s writings that he was acquaintedwith any language but Greek. Yet he has conceived very truly the relation ofGreek to foreign languages, which he is led to consider, because he finds thatmany Greek words are incapable of explanation. Allowing a good deal foraccident, and also for the fancies of the conditores linguae Graecae, there isan element of which he is unable to give an account. These unintelligible wordshe supposes to be of foreign origin, and to have been derived from a time whenthe Greeks were either barbarians, or in close relations to the barbarians.Socrates is aware that this principle is liable to great abuse; and, like the“Deus ex machina,” explains nothing. Hence he excuses himself forthe employment of such a device, and remarks that in foreign words there isstill a principle of correctness, which applies equally both to Greeks andbarbarians.

(3) But the greater number of primary words do not admit of derivation fromforeign languages; they must be resolved into the letters out of which they arecomposed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning. The framers oflanguage were aware of this; they observed that alpha was adapted to expresssize; eta length; omicron roundness; nu inwardness; rho accent rush or roar;lambda liquidity; gamma lambda the detention of the liquid or slippery element;delta and tau binding; phi, psi, sigma, xi, wind and cold, and so on.Plato’s analysis of the letters of the alphabet shows a wonderful insightinto the nature of language. He does not expressively distinguish between mereimitation and the symbolical use of sound to express thought, but he recognisesin the examples which he gives both modes of imitation. Gesture is the modewhich a deaf and dumb person would take of indicating his meaning. And languageis the gesture of the tongue; in the use of the letter rho accent, to express arushing or roaring, or of omicron to express roundness, there is a directimitation; while in the use of the letter alpha to express size, or of eta toexpress length, the imitation is symbolical. The use of analogous or similarsounds, in order to express similar analogous ideas, seems to have escaped him.

In passing from the gesture of the body to the movement of the tongue, Platomakes a great step in the physiology of language. He was probably the first whosaid that “language is imitative sound,” which is the greatest anddeepest truth of philology; although he is not aware of the laws of euphony andassociation by which imitation must be regulated. He was probably also thefirst who made a distinction between simple and compound words, a truth secondonly in importance to that which has just been mentioned. His great insight inone direction curiously contrasts with his blindness in another; for he appearsto be wholly unaware (compare his derivation of agathos from agastos and thoos)of the difference between the root and termination. But we must recollect thathe was necessarily more ignorant than any schoolboy of Greek grammar, and hadno table of the inflexions of verbs and nouns before his eyes, which might havesuggested to him the distinction.

(4) Plato distinctly affirms that language is not truth, or “philosophieune langue bien faite.” At first, Socrates has delighted himself withdiscovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly satirisingthe pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in words; and heafterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be gathered from hisexperiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many, words expressive of rest,as he had previously found expressive of motion. And even if this had beenotherwise, who would learn of words when he might learn of things? There is agreat controversy and high argument between Heracleiteans and Eleatics, but noman of sense would commit his soul in such enquiries to the imposers ofnames...In this and other passages Plato shows that he is as completelyemancipated from the influence of “Idols of the tribe” as Baconhimself.

The lesson which may be gathered from words is not metaphysical or moral, buthistorical. They teach us the affinity of races, they tell us something aboutthe association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the memory of a disusedcustom; but we cannot safely argue from them about right and wrong, matter andmind, freedom and necessity, or the other problems of moral and metaphysicalphilosophy. For the use of words on such subjects may often be metaphorical,accidental, derived from other languages, and may have no relation to thecontemporary state of thought and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention ofthem the result of philosophical reflection; they have been commonlytransferred from matter to mind, and their meaning is the very reverse of theiretymology. Because there is or is not a name for a thing, we cannot argue thatthe thing has or has not an actual existence; or that the antitheses,parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have anything corresponding tothem in nature. There are too many words as well as too few; and theygeneralize the objects or ideas which they represent. The greatest lesson whichthe philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be abovelanguage, making words our servants, and not allowing them to be our masters.

Plato does not add the further observation, that the etymological meaning ofwords is in process of being lost. If at first framed on a principle ofintelligibility, they would gradually cease to be intelligible, like those of aforeign language, he is willing to admit that they are subject to many changes,and put on many disguises. He acknowledges that the “poor creature”imitation is supplemented by another “poorcreature,”—convention. But he does not see that “habit andrepute,” and their relation to other words, are always exercising aninfluence over them. Words appear to be isolated, but they are really the partsof an organism which is always being reproduced. They are refined bycivilization, harmonized by poetry, emphasized by literature, technicallyapplied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the border-ground ofhuman knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and comewith a new force and association to every lively-minded person. They are fixedby the simultaneous utterance of millions, and yet are always imperceptiblychanging;—not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, andparticularly great writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations,Homer, Shakespear, Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are themakers of them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection oftheir own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passagegives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old andfamiliar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. But these and othersubtleties of language escaped the observation of Plato. He is not aware thatthe languages of the world are organic structures, and that every word in themis related to every other; nor does he conceive of language as the joint workof the speaker and the hearer, requiring in man a faculty not only ofexpressing his thoughts but of understanding those of others.

On the other hand, he cannot be justly charged with a desire to frame languageon artificial principles. Philosophers have sometimes dreamed of a technical orscientific language, in words which should have fixed meanings, and stand inthe same relation to one another as the substances which they denote. But thereis no more trace of this in Plato than there is of a language corresponding tothe ideas; nor, indeed, could the want of such a language be felt until thesciences were far more developed. Those who would extend the use of technicalphraseology beyond the limits of science or of custom, seem to forget thatfreedom and suggestiveness and the play of association are essentialcharacteristics of language. The great master has shown how he regardedpedantic distinctions of words or attempts to confine their meaning in thesatire on Prodicus in the Protagoras.

(5) In addition to these anticipations of the general principles of philology,we may note also a few curious observations on words and sounds. “TheEretrians say sklerotes for skleroter;” “the Thessalians callApollo Amlos;” “The Phrygians have the words pur, udor, kunesslightly changed;” “there is an old Homeric word emesato, meaning‘he contrived’;” “our forefathers, and especially thewomen, who are most conservative of the ancient language, loved the lettersiota and delta; but now iota is changed into eta and epsilon, and delta intozeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.” Plato wasvery willing to use inductive arguments, so far as they were within his reach;but he would also have assigned a large influence to chance. Nor indeed isinduction applicable to philology in the same degree as to most of the physicalsciences. For after we have pushed our researches to the furthest point, inlanguage as in all the other creations of the human mind, there will alwaysremain an element of exception or accident or free-will, which cannot beeliminated.

The question, “whether falsehood is impossible,” which Socratescharacteristically sets aside as too subtle for an old man (compare Euthyd.),could only have arisen in an age of imperfect consciousness, which had not yetlearned to distinguish words from things. Socrates replies in effect that wordshave an independent existence; thus anticipating the solution of the mediaevalcontroversy of Nominalism and Realism. He is aware too that languages exist invarious degrees of perfection, and that the analysis of them can only becarried to a certain point. “If we could always, or almost always, uselikenesses, which are the appropriate expressions, that would be the mostperfect state of language.” These words suggest a question of deeperinterest than the origin of language; viz. what is the ideal of language, howfar by any correction of their usages existing languages might become clearerand more expressive than they are, more poetical, and also more logical; orwhether they are now finally fixed and have received their last impress fromtime and authority.

On the whole, the Cratylus seems to contain deeper truths about language thanany other ancient writing. But feeling the uncertain ground upon which he iswalking, and partly in order to preserve the character of Socrates, Platoenvelopes the whole subject in a robe of fancy, and allows his principles todrop out as if by accident.

II. What is the result of recent speculations about the origin and nature oflanguage? Like other modern metaphysical enquiries, they end at last in astatement of facts. But, in order to state or understand the facts, ametaphysical insight seems to be required. There are more things in languagethan the human mind easily conceives. And many fallacies have to be dispelled,as well as observations made. The true spirit of philosophy or metaphysics canalone charm away metaphysical illusions, which are always reappearing, formerlyin the fancies of neoplatonist writers, now in the disguise of experience andcommon sense. An analogy, a figure of speech, an intelligible theory, asuperficial observation of the individual, have often been mistaken for a trueaccount of the origin of language.

Speaking is one of the simplest natural operations, and also the most complex.Nothing would seem to be easier or more trivial than a few words uttered by achild in any language. Yet into the formation of those words have enteredcauses which the human mind is not capable of calculating. They are a drop ortwo of the great stream or ocean of speech which has been flowing in all ages.They have been transmitted from one language to another; like the childhimself, they go back to the beginnings of the human race. How they originated,who can tell? Nevertheless we can imagine a stage of human society in which thecircle of men’s minds was narrower and their sympathies and instinctsstronger; in which their organs of speech were more flexible, and the sense ofhearing finer and more discerning; in which they lived more in company, andafter the manner of children were more given to express their feelings; inwhich “they moved all together,” like a herd of wild animals,“when they moved at all.” Among them, as in every society, aparticular person would be more sensitive and intelligent than the rest.Suddenly, on some occasion of interest (at the approach of a wild beast, shallwe say?), he first, they following him, utter a cry which resounds through theforest. The cry is almost or quite involuntary, and may be an imitation of theroar of the animal. Thus far we have not speech, but only the inarticulateexpression of feeling or emotion in no respect differing from the cries ofanimals; for they too call to one another and are answered. But now supposethat some one at a distance not only hears the sound, but apprehends themeaning: or we may imagine that the cry is repeated to a member of the societywho had been absent; the others act the scene over again when he returns homein the evening. And so the cry becomes a word. The hearer in turn gives backthe word to the speaker, who is now aware that he has acquired a new power.Many thousand times he exercises this power; like a child learning to talk, herepeats the same cry again, and again he is answered; he tries experiments witha like result, and the speaker and the hearer rejoice together in theirnewly-discovered faculty. At first there would be few such cries, and littledanger of mistaking or confusing them. For the mind of primitive man had anarrow range of perceptions and feelings; his senses were microscopic; twentyor thirty sounds or gestures would be enough for him, nor would he have anydifficulty in finding them. Naturally he broke out into speech—like theyoung infant he laughed and babbled; but not until there were hearers as wellas speakers did language begin. Not the interjection or the vocal imitation ofthe object, but the interjection or the vocal imitation of the objectunderstood, is the first rudiment of human speech.

After a while the word gathers associations, and has an independent existence.The imitation of the lion’s roar calls up the fears and hopes of thechase, which are excited by his appearance. In the moment of hearing the sound,without any appreciable interval, these and other latent experiences wake up inthe mind of the hearer. Not only does he receive an impression, but he bringsprevious knowledge to bear upon that impression. Necessarily the pictorialimage becomes less vivid, while the association of the nature and habits of theanimal is more distinctly perceived. The picture passes into a symbol, forthere would be too many of them and they would crowd the mind; the vocalimitation, too, is always in process of being lost and being renewed, just asthe picture is brought back again in the description of the poet. Words now canbe used more freely because there are more of them. What was once aninvoluntary expression becomes voluntary. Not only can men utter a cry or call,but they can communicate and converse; they can not only use words, but theycan even play with them. The word is separated both from the object and fromthe mind; and slowly nations and individuals attain to a fuller consciousnessof themselves.

Parallel with this mental process the articulation of sounds is graduallybecoming perfected. The finer sense detects the differences of them, andbegins, first to agglomerate, then to distinguish them. Times, persons, places,relations of all kinds, are expressed by modifications of them. The earliestparts of speech, as we may call them by anticipation, like the first utterancesof children, probably partook of the nature of interjections and nouns; thencame verbs; at length the whole sentence appeared, and rhythm and metrefollowed. Each stage in the progress of language was accompanied by somecorresponding stage in the mind and civilisation of man. In time, when thefamily became a nation, the wild growth of dialects passed into a language.Then arose poetry and literature. We can hardly realize to ourselves how muchwith each improvement of language the powers of the human mind were enlarged;how the inner world took the place of outer; how the pictorial or symbolical oranalogical word was refined into a notion; how language, fair and large andfree, was at last complete.

So we may imagine the speech of man to have begun as with the cries of animals,or the stammering lips of children, and to have attained by degrees theperfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying that this or anyother theory of language is proved by facts. It is not difficult to form anhypothesis which by a series of imaginary transitions will bridge over thechasm which separates man from the animals. Differences of kind may often bethus resolved into differences of degree. But we must not assume that we havein this way discovered the true account of them. Through what struggles theharmonious use of the organs of speech was acquired; to what extent theconditions of human life were different; how far the genius of individuals mayhave contributed to the discovery of this as of the other arts, we cannot say:Only we seem to see that language is as much the creation of the ear as of thetongue, and the expression of a movement stirring the hearts not of one manonly but of many, “as the trees of the wood are stirred by thewind.” The theory is consistent or not inconsistent with our own mentalexperience, and throws some degree of light upon a dark corner of the humanmind.

In the later analysis of language, we trace the opposite and contrastedelements of the individual and nation, of the past and present, of the inwardand outward, of the subject and object, of the notional and relational, of theroot or unchanging part of the word and of the changing inflexion, if such adistinction be admitted, of the vowel and the consonant, of quantity andaccent, of speech and writing, of poetry and prose. We observe also thereciprocal influence of sounds and conceptions on each other, like theconnexion of body and mind; and further remark that although the names ofobjects were originally proper names, as the grammarian or logician might callthem, yet at a later stage they become universal notions, which combine intoparticulars and individuals, and are taken out of the first rude agglomerationof sounds that they may be replaced in a higher and more logical order. We seethat in the simplest sentences are contained grammar and logic—the partsof speech, the Eleatic philosophy and the Kantian categories. So complex islanguage, and so expressive not only of the meanest wants of man, but of hishighest thoughts; so various are the aspects in which it is regarded by us.Then again, when we follow the history of languages, we observe that they arealways slowly moving, half dead, half alive, half solid, half fluid; the breathof a moment, yet like the air, continuous in all ages and countries,—likethe glacier, too, containing within them a trickling stream which depositsdebris of the rocks over which it passes. There were happy moments, as we mayconjecture, in the lives of nations, at which they came to the birth—asin the golden age of literature, the man and the time seem to conspire; theeloquence of the bard or chief, as in later times the creations of the greatwriter who is the expression of his age, became impressed on the minds of theircountrymen, perhaps in the hour of some crisis of national development—amigration, a conquest, or the like. The picture of the word which was beginningto be lost, is now revived; the sound again echoes to the sense; men findthemselves capable not only of expressing more feelings, and describing moreobjects, but of expressing and describing them better. The world before theflood, that is to say, the world of ten, twenty, a hundred thousand years ago,has passed away and left no sign. But the best conception that we can form ofit, though imperfect and uncertain, is gained from the analogy of causes stillin action, some powerful and sudden, others working slowly in the course ofinfinite ages. Something too may be allowed to “the persistency of thestrongest,” to “the survival of the fittest,” in this as inthe other realms of nature.

These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of languagesuggests to us about the powers of the human mind and the forces and influencesby which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were inspired. Yet inmaking these and similar generalizations we may note also dangers to which weare exposed. (1) There is the confusion of ideas with facts—of merepossibilities, and generalities, and modes of conception with actual anddefinite knowledge. The words “evolution,” “birth,”“law,” development,” “instinct,”“implicit,” “explicit,” and the like, have a falseclearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our knowledge. Themetaphor of a flower or a tree, or some other work of nature or art, is oftenin like manner only a pleasing picture. (2) There is the fallacy of resolvingthe languages which we know into their parts, and then imagining that we candiscover the nature of language by reconstructing them. (3) There is the dangerof identifying language, not with thoughts but with ideas. (4) There is theerror of supposing that the analysis of grammar and logic has always existed,or that their distinctions were familiar to Socrates and Plato. (5) There isthe fallacy of exaggerating, and also of diminishing the interval whichseparates articulate from inarticulate language—the cries of animals fromthe speech of man—the instincts of animals from the reason of man. (6)There is the danger which besets all enquiries into the early history ofman—of interpreting the past by the present, and of substituting thedefinite and intelligible for the true but dim outline which is the horizon ofhuman knowledge.

The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We havethe analogy of the cries of animals, of the songs of birds (“man, likethe nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up thoughts withmusical notes”), of music, of children learning to speak, of barbarousnations in which the linguistic instinct is still undecayed, of ourselveslearning to think and speak a new language, of the deaf and dumb who have wordswithout sounds, of the various disorders of speech; and we have theafter-growth of mythology, which, like language, is an unconscious creation ofthe human mind. We can observe the social and collective instincts of animals,and may remark how, when domesticated, they have the power of understanding butnot of speaking, while on the other hand, some birds which are comparativelydevoid of intelligence, make a nearer approach to articulate speech. We maynote how in the animals there is a want of that sympathy with one another whichappears to be the soul of language. We can compare the use of speech with othermental and bodily operations; for speech too is a kind of gesture, and in thechild or savage accompanied with gesture. We may observe that the child learnsto speak, as he learns to walk or to eat, by a natural impulse; yet in eithercase not without a power of imitation which is also natural to him—he istaught to read, but he breaks forth spontaneously in speech. We can trace theimpulse to bind together the world in ideas beginning in the first efforts tospeak and culminating in philosophy. But there remains an element which cannotbe explained, or even adequately described. We can understand how man createsor constructs consciously and by design; and see, if we do not understand, hownature, by a law, calls into being an organised structure. But the intermediateorganism which stands between man and nature, which is the work of mind yetunconscious, and in which mind and matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived toherself is really limited by all other minds, is neither understood nor seen byus, and is with reluctance admitted to be a fact.

Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration ofthe world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical and mental sciences,and also the mirror in which they are reflected, present at every moment to theindividual, and yet having a sort of eternal or universal nature. When weanalyze our own mental processes, we find words everywhere in every degree ofclearness and consistency, fading away in dreams and more like pictures,rapidly succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greaterdistinctness and consecutiveness in speech, and a greater still in writing,taking the place of one another when we try to become emancipated from theirinfluence. For in all processes of the mind which are conscious we are talkingto ourselves; the attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,—theyare always reappearing when we fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separatefaculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to which all our other powersof expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrumentis not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.

The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and of theiractions as links in a chain of causes and effects going back to the beginningof time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their own individuality in theuniversal cause or nature. In like manner we might think of the words which wedaily use, as derived from the first speech of man, and of all the languages inthe world, as the expressions or varieties of a single force or life oflanguage of which the thoughts of men are the accident. Such a conceptionenables us to grasp the power and wonder of languages, and is very natural tothe scientific philologist. For he, like the metaphysician, believes in thereality of that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormousinfluence which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like fixedideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations we attributeto language too much the nature of a cause, and too little of aneffect,—too much of an absolute, too little of a relativecharacter,—too much of an ideal, too little of a matter-of-factexistence.

Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which allexistent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we must notconceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or is anythingmore than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely various phenomena.There is no abstract language “in rerum natura,” any more thanthere is an abstract tree, but only languages in various stages of growth,maturity, and decay. Nor do other logical distinctions or even grammaticalexactly correspond to the facts of language; for they too are attempts to giveunity and regularity to a subject which is partly irregular.

We find, however, that there are distinctions of another kind by which thisvast field of language admits of being mapped out. There is the distinctionbetween biliteral and triliteral roots, and the various inflexions whichaccompany them; between the mere mechanical cohesion of sounds or words, andthe “chemical” combination of them into a new word; there is thedistinction between languages which have had a free and full development oftheir organisms, and languages which have been stunted in theirgrowth,—lamed in their hands or feet, and never able to acquireafterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there is the distinctionbetween synthetical languages like Greek and Latin, which have retained theirinflexions, and analytical languages like English or French, which have lostthem. Innumerable as are the languages and dialects of mankind, there arecomparatively few classes to which they can be referred.

Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech. Theorgans of language are the same in all mankind, and are only capable ofuttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has tongue, teeth, lips, palate,throat, mouth, which he may close or open, and adapt in various ways; making,first, vowels and consonants; and secondly, other classes of letters. Theelements of all speech, like the elements of the musical scale, are few andsimple, though admitting of infinite gradations and combinations. Whateverslight differences exist in the use or formation of these organs, owing toclimate or the sense of euphony or other causes, they are as nothing comparedwith their agreement. Here then is a real basis of unity in the study ofphilology, unlike that imaginary abstract unity of which we were just nowspeaking.

Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical, orphysiological point of view, the materials of our knowledge are inexhaustible.The comparisons of children learning to speak, of barbarous nations, of musicalnotes, of the cries of animals, of the song of birds, increase our insight intothe nature of human speech. Many observations which would otherwise haveescaped us are suggested by them. But they do not explain why, in man and inman only, the speaker met with a response from the hearer, and the halfarticulate sound gradually developed into Sanscrit and Greek. They hardlyenable us to approach any nearer the secret of the origin of language, which,like some of the other great secrets of nature,—the origin of birth anddeath, or of animal life,—remains inviolable. That problem isindissolubly bound up with the origin of man; and if we ever know more of theone, we may expect to know more of the other.^[1]

[1]Compare W. Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichenSprachbaues, and M. Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language.

It is more than sixteen years since the preceding remarks were written, whichwith a few alterations have now been reprinted. During the interval theprogress of philology has been very great. More languages have been compared;the inner structure of language has been laid bare; the relations of soundshave been more accurately discriminated; the manner in which dialects affect orare affected by the literary or principal form of a language is betterunderstood. Many merely verbal questions have been eliminated; the remains ofthe old traditional methods have died away. The study has passed from themetaphysical into an historical stage. Grammar is no longer confused withlanguage, nor the anatomy of words and sentences with their life and use.Figures of speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed, havebeen stripped off; and we see language more as it truly was. The immensity ofthe subject is gradually revealed to us, and the reign of law becomes apparent.Yet the law is but partially seen; the traces of it are often lost in thedistance. For languages have a natural but not a perfect growth; like othercreations of nature into which the will of man enters, they are full of what weterm accident and irregularity. And the difficulties of the subject become notless, but greater, as we proceed—it is one of those studies in which weseem to know less as we know more; partly because we are no longer satisfiedwith the vague and superficial ideas of it which prevailed fifty years ago;partly also because the remains of the languages with which we are acquaintedalways were, and if they are still living, are, in a state of transition; andthirdly, because there are lacunae in our knowledge of them which can never befilled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of them has been preserved. Yetthe materials at our disposal are far greater than any individual can use. Suchare a few of the general reflections which the present state of philology callsup.

(1) Language seems to be composite, but into its first elements the philologerhas never been able to penetrate. However far he goes back, he never arrives atthe beginning; or rather, as in Geology or in Astronomy, there is no beginning.He is too apt to suppose that by breaking up the existing forms of languageinto their parts he will arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merelyanalyzing what never existed, or is never known to have existed, except in acomposite form. He may divide nouns and verbs into roots and inflexions, but hehas no evidence which will show that the omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi,though analogous to ego, me, either became pronouns or were generated out ofpronouns. To say that “pronouns, like ripe fruit, dropped out ofverbs,” is a misleading figure of speech. Although all languages havesome common principles, there is no primitive form or forms of language knownto us, or to be reasonably imagined, from which they are all descended. Noinference can be drawn from language, either for or against the unity of thehuman race. Nor is there any proof that words were ever used without anyrelation to each other. Whatever may be the meaning of a sentence or a wordwhen applied to primitive language, it is probable that the sentence is moreakin to the original form than the word, and that the later stage of languageis the result rather of analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is acombination of the two. Nor, again, are we sure that the original process oflearning to speak was the same in different places or among different races ofmen. It may have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes mayhave used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been more orless inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have modified themby the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the lengthening and strengtheningof vowels or by the shortening and weakening of them, by the condensation orrarefaction of consonants. But who gave to language these primeval laws; or whyone race has triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members of agroup of languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languagesresemble one another in certain parts of their structure and differ in others;or why in one language there is a greater development of vowels, in another ofconsonants, and the like—are questions of which we only “entertainconjecture.” We must remember the length of time that has elapsed sinceman first walked upon the earth, and that in this vast but unknown period everyvariety of language may have been in process of formation and decay, many timesover.

(Compare Plato, Laws):—

“ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin ofgovernment? Will not a man be able to judge best from a point of view in whichhe may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good and evil?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN STRANGER: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view oftime, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite ages.

CLEINIAS: How so?

ATHENIAN STRANGER: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which haselapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?

CLEINIAS: Hardly.

ATHENIAN STRANGER: But you are quite sure that it must be vast andincalculable?

CLEINIAS: No doubt.

ATHENIAN STRANGER: And have there not been thousands and thousands of citieswhich have come into being and perished during this period? And has not everyplace had endless forms of government, and been sometimes rising, and at othertimes falling, and again improving or waning?”

Aristot. Metaph.:—

“And if a person should conceive the tales of mythology to mean only thatmen thought the gods to be the first essences of things, he would deem thereflection to have been inspired and would consider that, whereas probablyevery art and part of wisdom had been DISCOVERED AND LOST MANY TIMES OVER, suchnotions were but a remnant of the past which has survived to our day.”)

It can hardly be supposed that any traces of an original language stillsurvive, any more than of the first huts or buildings which were constructed byman. Nor are we at all certain of the relation, if any, in which the greaterfamilies of languages stand to each other. The influence of individuals mustalways have been a disturbing element. Like great writers in later times, theremay have been many a barbaric genius who taught the men of his tribe to sing orspeak, showing them by example how to continue or divide their words, charmingtheir souls with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objectsthe expression of their confused fancies—to whom the whole of languagemight in truth be said to be a figure of speech. One person may have introduceda new custom into the formation or pronunciation of a word; he may have beenimitated by others, and the custom, or form, or accent, or quantity, or rhymewhich he introduced in a single word may have become the type on which manyother words or inflexions of words were framed, and may have quickly ranthrough a whole language. For like the other gifts which nature has bestowedupon man, that of speech has been conveyed to him through the medium, not ofthe many, but of the few, who were his“law-givers”—“the legislator with the dialecticianstanding on his right hand,” in Plato’s striking image, who formedthe manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and behaviour,whose gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively imitated bythem,—the “king of men” who was their priest, almost theirGod...But these are conjectures only: so little do we know of the origin oflanguage that the real scholar is indisposed to touch the subject at all.

(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or originallanguage which it is time to leave behind us. We no longer divide languagesinto synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity of structure to be thesafe or only guide to the affinities of them. We do not confuse the parts ofspeech with the categories of Logic. Nor do we conceive languages any more thancivilisations to be in a state of dissolution; they do not easily pass away,but are far more tenacious of life than the tribes by whom they are spoken.“Where two or three are gathered together,” they survive. As in thehuman frame, as in the state, there is a principle of renovation as well as ofdecay which is at work in all of them. Neither do we suppose them to beinvented by the wit of man. With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or wordsnewly imported from a foreign language, and the like, in which art has imitatednature, “words are not made but grow.” Nor do we attribute to thema supernatural origin. The law which regulates them is like the law whichgoverns the circulation of the blood, or the rising of the sap in trees; theaction of it is uniform, but the result, which appears in the superficial formsof men and animals or in the leaves of trees, is an endless profusion andvariety. The laws of vegetation are invariable, but no two plants, no twoleaves of the forest are precisely the same. The laws of language areinvariable, but no two languages are alike, no two words have exactly the samemeaning. No two sounds are exactly of the same quality, or give precisely thesame impression.

It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other pointswhich appear to be still in dispute. Is language conscious or unconscious? Inspeaking or writing have we present to our minds the meaning or the sound orthe construction of the words which we are using?—No more than theseparate drops of water with which we quench our thirst are present: the wholedraught may be conscious, but not the minute particles of which it is made up:So the whole sentence may be conscious, but the several words, syllables,letters are not thought of separately when we are uttering them. Like othernatural operations, the process of speech, when most perfect, is least observedby us. We do not pause at each mouthful to dwell upon the taste of it: nor hasthe speaker time to ask himself the comparative merits of different modes ofexpression while he is uttering them. There are many things in the use oflanguage which may be observed from without, but which cannot be explained fromwithin. Consciousness carries us but a little way in the investigation of themind; it is not the faculty of internal observation, but only the dim lightwhich makes such observation possible. What is supposed to be our consciousnessof language is really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits ofinnumerable degrees. But would it not be better if this term, which is somisleading, and yet has played so great a part in mental science, were eitherbanished or used only with the distinct meaning of “attention to our ownminds,” such as is called forth, not by familiar mental processes, but bythe interruption of them? Now in this sense we may truly say that we are notconscious of ordinary speech, though we are commonly roused to attention by themisuse or mispronunciation of a word. Still less, even in schools andacademies, do we ever attempt to invent new words or to alter the meaning ofold ones, except in the case, mentioned above, of technical or borrowed wordswhich are artificially made or imported because a need of them is felt. Neitherin our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of reflection in mancontributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of language. “Whichof us by taking thought” can make new words or constructions? Reflectionis the least of the causes by which language is affected, and is likely to havethe least power, when the linguistic instinct is greatest, as in young childrenand in the infancy of nations.

A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental element oflanguage; they are really inseparable—no definite line can be drawnbetween them, any more than in any other common act of mind and body. It istrue that within certain limits we possess the power of varying sounds byopening and closing the mouth, by touching the palate or the teeth with thetongue, by lengthening or shortening the vocal instrument, by greater or lessstress, by a higher or lower pitch of the voice, and we can substitute one noteor accent for another. But behind the organs of speech and their action thereremains the informing mind, which sets them in motion and works together withthem. And behind the great structure of human speech and the lesser varietiesof language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse,there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or nature which gives orderto it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its infinitesimalminuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discusswhether philology is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, ifwe frankly recognize that, like all the sciences which are concerned with man,it has a double aspect,—inward and outward; and that the inward can onlybe known through the outward. Neither need we raise the question whether thelaws of language, like the other laws of human action, admit of exceptions. Theanswer in all cases is the same—that the laws of nature are uniform,though the consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to us.The superficial appearances of language, as of nature, are irregular, but we donot therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The comparison of the growth oflanguage in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly discarded, fornations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in the other politicalsciences, we must distinguish between collective and individual actions orprocesses, and not attribute to the one what belongs to the other. Again, whenwe speak of the hereditary or paternity of a language, we must remember thatthe parents are alive as well as the children, and that all the precedinggenerations survive (after a manner) in the latest form of it. And when, forthe purposes of comparison, we form into groups the roots or terminations ofwords, we should not forget how casual is the manner in which theirresemblances have arisen—they were not first written down by a grammarianin the paradigms of a grammar and learned out of a book, but were due to manychance attractions of sound or of meaning, or of both combined. So manycautions have to be borne in mind, and so many first thoughts to be dismissed,before we can proceed safely in the path of philological enquiry. It might bewell sometimes to lay aside figures of speech, such as the “root”and the “branches,” the “stem,” the“strata” of Geology, the “compounds” of Chemistry,“the ripe fruit of pronouns dropping from verbs” (see above), andthe like, which are always interesting, but are apt to be delusive. Yet suchfigures of speech are far nearer the truth than the theories which attributethe invention and improvement of language to the conscious action of the humanmind...Lastly, it is doubted by recent philologians whether climate can besupposed to have exercised any influence worth speaking of on a language: sucha view is said to be unproven: it had better therefore not be silently assumed.

“Natural selection” and the “survival of the fittest”have been applied in the field of philology, as well as in the other scienceswhich are concerned with animal and vegetable life. And a Darwinian school ofphilologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words in theplace of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to language or toother branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very preciselydefined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by “the naturalselection” of words or meanings of words or by the “persistence andsurvival of the fittest” the maintainer of the theory intends to affirmnothing more than this—that the word “fittest to survive”survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. But if he means thatthe word or the meaning of the word or some portion of the word which comesinto use or drops out of use is selected or rejected on the ground of economyor parsimony or ease to the speaker or clearness or euphony or expressiveness,or greater or less demand for it, or anything of this sort, he is affirming aproposition which has several senses, and in none of these senses can beassisted to be uniformly true. For the laws of language are precarious, and canonly act uniformly when there is such frequency of intercourse among neighboursas is sufficient to enforce them. And there are many reasons why a man shouldprefer his own way of speaking to that of others, unless by so doing he becomesunintelligible. The struggle for existence among words is not of that fierceand irresistible kind in which birds, beasts and fishes devour one another, butof a milder sort, allowing one usage to be substituted for another, not byforce, but by the persuasion, or rather by the prevailing habit, of a majority.The favourite figure, in this, as in some other uses of it, has tended ratherto obscure than explain the subject to which it has been applied. Nor in anycase can the struggle for existence be deemed to be the sole or principal causeof changes in language, but only one among many, and one of which we cannoteasily measure the importance. There is a further objection which may be urgedequally against all applications of the Darwinian theory. As in animal life andlikewise in vegetable, so in languages, the process of change is said to beinsensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to pass into one another byimperceptible gradation. But in both cases the newly-created forms soon becomefixed; there are few if any vestiges of the intermediate links, and so thebetter half of the evidence of the change is wanting.

(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many of therules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the corrections ofit which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like law, delights indefinition: human speech, like human action, though very far from being a merechaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and is always in a state of change ortransition. Grammar gives an erroneous conception of language: for it reducesto a system that which is not a system. Its figures of speech, pleonasms,ellipses, anacolutha, pros to semainomenon, and the like have no reality; theydo not either make conscious expressions more intelligible or show the way inwhich they have arisen; they are chiefly designed to bring an earlier use oflanguage into conformity with the later. Often they seem intended only toremind us that great poets like Aeschylus or Sophocles or Pindar or a greatprose writer like Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable liberties withgrammatical rules; it appears never to have occurred to the inventors of themthat these real “conditores linguae Graecae” lived in an age beforegrammar, when “Greece also was living Greece.” It is the anatomy,not the physiology of language, which grammar seeks to describe: into the idiomand higher life of words it does not enter. The ordinary Greek grammar gives acomplete paradigm of the verb, without suggesting that the double or trebleforms of Perfects, Aorists, etc. are hardly ever contemporaneous. Itdistinguishes Moods and Tenses, without observing how much of the nature of onepasses into the other. It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and Middle, buttakes no notice of the precarious existence and uncertain character of the lastof the three. Language is a thing of degrees and relations and associations andexceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed rules. Language has many varieties ofusage: grammar tries to reduce them to a single one. Grammar divides verbs intoregular and irregular: it does not recognize that the irregular, equally withthe regular, are subject to law, and that a language which had no exceptionswould not be a natural growth: for it could not have been subjected to theinfluences by which language is ordinarily affected. It is always wanting todescribe ancient languages in the terms of a modern one. It has a favouritefiction that one word is put in the place of another; the truth is that no wordis ever put for another. It has another fiction, that a word has been omitted:words are omitted because they are no longer needed; and the omission hasceased to be observed. The common explanation of kata or some other preposition“being understood” in a Greek sentence is another fiction of thesame kind, which tends to disguise the fact that under cases were comprehendedoriginally many more relations, and that prepositions are used only to definethe meaning of them with greater precision. These instances are sufficient toshow the sort of errors which grammar introduces into language. We are notconsidering the question of its utility to the beginner in the study. Even tohim the best grammar is the shortest and that in which he will have least tounlearn. It may be said that the explanations here referred to are already outof date, and that the study of Greek grammar has received a new character fromcomparative philology. This is true; but it is also true that the traditionalgrammar has still a great hold on the mind of the student.

Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar, becausethey wear the appearance of philosophy and there is no test to which they canbe subjected. They are useful in so far as they give us an insight into thehistory of the human mind and the modes of thought which have existed in formerages; or in so far as they furnish wider conceptions of the different branchesof knowledge and of their relation to one another. But they are worse thanuseless when they outrun experience and abstract the mind from the observationof facts, only to envelope it in a mist of words. Some philologers, likeSchleicher, have been greatly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel; nearly allof them to a certain extent have fallen under the dominion of physical science.Even Kant himself thought that the first principles of philosophy could beelicited from the analysis of the proposition, in this respect falling short ofPlato. Westphal holds that there are three stages of language: (1) in whichthings were characterized independently, (2) in which they were regarded inrelation to human thought, and (3) in relation to one another. But are not suchdistinctions an anachronism? for they imply a growth of abstract ideas whichnever existed in early times. Language cannot be explained by Metaphysics; forit is prior to them and much more nearly allied to sense. It is not likely thatthe meaning of the cases is ultimately resolvable into relations of space andtime. Nor can we suppose the conception of cause and effect or of the finiteand infinite or of the same and other to be latent in language at a time whenin their abstract form they had never entered into the mind of man...If thescience of Comparative Philology had possessed “enough of Metaphysics toget rid of Metaphysics,” it would have made far greater progress.

(4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are fullydeveloped. They are of several patterns; and these become altered by admixturein various degrees,—they may only borrow a few words from one another andretain their life comparatively unaltered, or they may meet in a struggle forexistence until one of the two is overpowered and retires from the field. Theyattain the full rights and dignity of language when they acquire the use ofwriting and have a literature of their own; they pass into dialects and growout of them, in proportion as men are isolated or united by locality oroccupation. The common language sometimes reacts upon the dialects and impartsto them also a literary character. The laws of language can be best discernedin the great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient tomodern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the silentnotes of the world’s history; they mark periods of unknown length inwhich war and conquest were running riot over whole continents, times ofsuffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the mastersbecame subjects and the subject races masters, in which driven by necessity orimpelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their original homes and butslowly found a resting-place. Language would be the greatest of all historicalmonuments, if it could only tell us the history of itself.

(5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The simplest ofall is to observe our own use of language in conversation or in writing, how weput words together, how we construct and connect sentences, what are the rulesof accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and composition of words,the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of letters, the mistakes to whichwe are ourselves most liable of spelling or pronunciation. We may compare withour own language some other, even when we have only a slight knowledge of it,such as French or German. Even a little Latin will enable us to appreciate thegrand difference between ancient and modern European languages. In the childlearning to speak we may note the inherent strength of language, which like“a mountain river” is always forcing its way out. We may witnessthe delight in imitation and repetition, and some of the laws by which soundspass into one another. We may learn something also from the falterings of oldage, the searching for words, and the confusion of them with one another, theforgetfulness of proper names (more commonly than of other words because theyare more isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons alsoto be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of greatcities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, sopathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of thedeaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of sounds inrelation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a visible evidence ofthe nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said to know what we canmanufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of Bishop Wilkins, are chieflyuseful in showing what language is not. The study of any foreign language maybe made also a study of Comparative Philology. There are several points, suchas the nature of irregular verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, theinfluence of euphony, the decay or loss of inflections, the elements of syntax,which may be examined as well in the history of our own language as of anyother. A few well-selected questions may lead the student at once into theheart of the mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existencegenerally more irregular than any other parts of speech? Why is the number ofwords so small in which the sound is an echo of the sense? Why does the meaningof words depart so widely from their etymology? Why do substantives oftendiffer in meaning from the verbs to which they are related, adverbs fromadjectives? Why do words differing in origin coalesce in the same sound thoughretaining their differences of meaning? Why are some verbs impersonal? Why arethere only so many parts of speech, and on what principle are they divided?These are a few crucial questions which give us an insight from differentpoints of view into the true nature of language.

(6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the falseappearances in which grammar and philology, or the love of system generally,have clothed it. We have also sought to indicate the sources of our knowledgeof it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we may now proceed toconsider some of the principles or natural laws which have created or modifiedit.

i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common also to theanimals, is imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the solitude of theforest: they are answered by similar cries heard from a distance. The bird,too, mimics the voice of man and makes answer to him. Man tells to man thesecret place in which he is hiding himself; he remembers and repeats the soundwhich he has heard. The love of imitation becomes a passion and an instinct tohim. Primitive men learnt to speak from one another, like a child from itsmother or nurse. They learnt of course a rudimentary, half-articulate language,the cry or song or speech which was the expression of what we now call humanthoughts and feelings. We may still remark how much greater and more naturalthe exercise of the power is in the use of language than in any other processor action of the human mind.

ii. Imitation provided the first material of language: but it was“without form and void.” During how many years or hundreds orthousands of years the imitative or half-articulate stage continued there is nopossibility of determining. But we may reasonably conjecture that there was atime when the vocal utterance of man was intermediate between what we now calllanguage and the cry of a bird or animal. Speech before language was a rudisindigestaque materies, not yet distributed into words and sentences, in whichthe cry of fear or joy mingled with more definite sounds recognized by customas the expressions of things or events. It was the principle of analogy whichintroduced into this “indigesta moles” order and measure. It wasAnaxagoras’ omou panta chremata, eita nous elthon diekosmese: the lightof reason lighted up all things and at once began to arrange them. In everysentence, in every word and every termination of a word, this power of formingrelations to one another was contained. There was a proportion of sound tosound, of meaning to meaning, of meaning to sound. The cases and numbers ofnouns, the persons, tenses, numbers of verbs, were generally on the same ornearly the same pattern and had the same meaning. The sounds by which they wereexpressed were rough-hewn at first; after a while they grew morerefined—the natural laws of euphony began to affect them. The rules ofsyntax are likewise based upon analogy. Time has an analogy with space,arithmetic with geometry. Not only in musical notes, but in the quantity,quality, accent, rhythm of human speech, trivial or serious, there is a law ofproportion. As in things of beauty, as in all nature, in the composition aswell as in the motion of all things, there is a similarity of relations bywhich they are held together.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the analogies of language are alwaysuniform: there may be often a choice between several, and sometimes one andsometimes another will prevail. In Greek there are three declensions of nouns;the forms of cases in one of them may intrude upon another. Similarly verbs in-omega and -mu iota interchange forms of tenses, and the completed paradigm ofthe verb is often made up of both. The same nouns may be partly declinable andpartly indeclinable, and in some of their cases may have fallen out of use.Here are rules with exceptions; they are not however really exceptions, butcontain in themselves indications of other rules. Many of these interruptionsor variations of analogy occur in pronouns or in the verb of existence of whichthe forms were too common and therefore too deeply imbedded in languageentirely to drop out. The same verbs in the same meaning may sometimes take onecase, sometimes another. The participle may also have the character of anadjective, the adverb either of an adjective or of a preposition. Theseexceptions are as regular as the rules, but the causes of them are seldom knownto us.

Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere intersected bythe lines of analogy. Like number from which it seems to be derived, theprinciple of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern the similarities anddifferences of things, and their relations to one another. At first these aresuch as lie on the surface only; after a time they are seen by men to reachfarther down into the nature of things. Gradually in language they arrangethemselves into a sort of imperfect system; groups of personal and case endingsare placed side by side. The fertility of language produces many more than arewanted; and the superfluous ones are utilized by the assignment to them of newmeanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially compensated byeach other. It must be remembered that in all the languages which have aliterature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, we are not at the beginningbut almost at the end of the linguistic process; we have reached a time whenthe verb and the noun are nearly perfected, though in no language did theycompletely perfect themselves, because for some unknown reason the motivepowers of languages seem to have ceased when they were on the eve ofcompletion: they became fixed or crystallized in an imperfect form either fromthe influence of writing and literature, or because no further differentiationof them was required for the intelligibility of language. So not withoutadmixture and confusion and displacement and contamination of sounds and themeanings of words, a lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far wecan see and no further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogyprevails in all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to thequestion; or no other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways inwhich, like number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world,both visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not (a)arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a Latin nounin “us” should end in “um;” nor (b) from any necessityof being understood,—much less articulation would suffice for this; nor(c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds. Suchnotions were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive man. We mayspeak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest, easiest, mosteuphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of two competingsounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our knowledge. We may tryto grasp the infinity of language either under the figure of a limitless plaindivided into countries and districts by natural boundaries, or of a vast rivereternally flowing whose origin is concealed from us; we may apprehend partiallythe laws by which speech is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if weshould never know, any more than in the parallel case of the origin of species,how vocal sounds received life and grew, and in the form of languages came tobe distributed over the earth.

iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even prior to itcomes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of analogy orsimilarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number of words it hasbecome disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of language is itentirely lost. It belongs chiefly to early language, in which words were few;and its influence grew less and less as time went on. To the ear which had asense of harmony it became a barbarism which disturbed the flow and equilibriumof discourse; it was an excrescence which had to be cut out, a survival whichneeded to be got rid of, because it was out of keeping with the rest. Itremained for the most part only as a formative principle, which used words andletters not as crude imitations of other natural sounds, but as symbols ofideas which were naturally associated with them. It received in another way anew character; it affected not so much single words, as larger portions ofhuman speech. It regulated the juxtaposition of sounds and the cadence ofsentences. It was the music, not of song, but of speech, in prose as well asverse. The old onomatopea of primitive language was refined into an onomatopeaof a higher kind, in which it is no longer true to say that a particular soundcorresponds to a motion or action of man or beast or movement of nature, butthat in all the higher uses of language the sound is the echo of the sense,especially in poetry, in which beauty and expressiveness are given to humanthoughts by the harmonious composition of the words, syllables, letters,accents, quantities, rhythms, rhymes, varieties and contrasts of all sorts. Thepoet with his “Break, break, break” or his e pasin nekuessikataphthimenoisin anassein or his “longius ex altoque sinumtrahit,” can produce a far finer music than any crude imitations ofthings or actions in sound, although a letter or two having this imitativepower may be a lesser element of beauty in such passages. The same subtlesensibility, which adapts the word to the thing, adapts the sentence or cadenceto the general meaning or spirit of the passage. This is the higher onomatopeawhich has banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in greatlanguages and literatures.

We can see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by variousdegrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis or pitch, becomethe natural expressions of the finer parts of human feeling or thought. And notonly so, but letters themselves have a significance; as Plato observes that theletter rho accent is expressive of motion, the letters delta and tau of bindingand rest, the letter lambda of smoothness, nu of inwardness, the letter eta oflength, the letter omicron of roundness. These were often combined so as toform composite notions, as for example in tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged),thrauein (crush), krouein (strike), thruptein (break), pumbein(whirl),—in all which words we notice a parallel composition of sounds intheir English equivalents. Plato also remarks, as we remark, that theonomatopoetic principle is far from prevailing uniformly, and further that noexplanation of language consistently corresponds with any system of philosophy,however great may be the light which language throws upon the nature of themind. Both in Greek and English we find groups of words such as string, swing,sling, spring, sting, which are parallel to one another and may be said toderive their vocal effect partly from contrast of letters, but in which it isimpossible to assign a precise amount of meaning to each of the expressive andonomatopoetic letters. A few of them are directly imitative, as for example theomega in oon, which represents the round form of the egg by the figure of themouth: or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of the sound of the wordcorresponds to the thing signified by it; or bombos (buzzing), of which thefirst syllable, as in its English equivalent, has the meaning of a deep sound.We may observe also (as we see in the case of the poor stammerer) that speechhas the co-operation of the whole body and may be often assisted or halfexpressed by gesticulation. A sound or word is not the work of the vocal organsonly; nearly the whole of the upper part of the human frame, including head,chest, lungs, have a share in creating it; and it may be accompanied by amovement of the eyes, nose, fingers, hands, feet which contributes to theeffect of it.

The principle of onomatopea has fallen into discredit, partly because it hasbeen supposed to imply an actual manufacture of words out of syllables andletters, like a piece of joiner’s work,—a theory of language whichis more and more refuted by facts, and more and more going out of fashion withphilologians; and partly also because the traces of onomatopea in separatewords become almost obliterated in the course of ages. The poet of languagecannot put in and pull out letters, as a painter might insert or blot out ashade of colour to give effect to his picture. It would be ridiculous for himto alter any received form of a word in order to render it more expressive ofthe sense. He can only select, perhaps out of some dialect, the form which isalready best adapted to his purpose. The true onomatopea is not a creative, buta formative principle, which in the later stage of the history of languageceases to act upon individual words; but still works through the collocation ofthem in the sentence or paragraph, and the adaptation of every word, syllable,letter to one another and to the rhythm of the whole passage.

iv. Next, under a distinct head, although not separable from the preceding, maybe considered the differentiation of languages, i.e. the manner in whichdifferences of meaning and form have arisen in them. Into their first creationwe have ceased to enquire: it is their aftergrowth with which we are nowconcerned. How did the roots or substantial portions of words become modifiedor inflected? and how did they receive separate meanings? First we remark thatwords are attracted by the sounds and senses of other words, so that they formgroups of nouns and verbs analogous in sound and sense to one another, eachnoun or verb putting forth inflexions, generally of two or three patterns, andwith exceptions. We do not say that we know how sense became first allied tosound; but we have no difficulty in ascertaining how the sounds and meanings ofwords were in time parted off or differentiated. (1) The chief causes whichregulate the variations of sound are (a) double or differing analogies, whichlead sometimes to one form, sometimes to another (b) euphony, by which is meantchiefly the greater pleasure to the ear and the greater facility to the organsof speech which is given by a new formation or pronunciation of a word (c) thenecessity of finding new expressions for new classes or processes of things. Weare told that changes of sound take place by innumerable gradations until awhole tribe or community or society find themselves acquiescing in a newpronunciation or use of language. Yet no one observes the change, or is at allaware that in the course of a lifetime he and his contemporaries haveappreciably varied their intonation or use of words. On the other hand, thenecessities of language seem to require that the intermediate sounds ormeanings of words should quickly become fixed or set and not continue in astate of transition. The process of settling down is aided by the organs ofspeech and by the use of writing and printing. (2) The meaning of words variesbecause ideas vary or the number of things which is included under them or withwhich they are associated is increased. A single word is thus made to do dutyfor many more things than were formerly expressed by it; and it parts intodifferent senses when the classes of things or ideas which are represented byit are themselves different and distinct. A figurative use of a word may easilypass into a new sense: a new meaning caught up by association may become moreimportant than all the rest. The good or neutral sense of a word, such asJesuit, Puritan, Methodist, Heretic, has been often converted into a bad one bythe malevolence of party spirit. Double forms suggest different meanings andare often used to express them; and the form or accent of a word has been notunfrequently altered when there is a difference of meaning. The difference ofgender in nouns is utilized for the same reason. New meanings of words pushthemselves into the vacant spaces of language and retire when they are nolonger needed. Language equally abhors vacancy and superfluity. But theremedial measures by which both are eliminated are not due to any consciousaction of the human mind; nor is the force exerted by them constraining ornecessary.

(7) We have shown that language, although subject to laws, is far from being ofan exact and uniform nature. We may now speak briefly of the faults oflanguage. They may be compared to the faults of Geology, in which differentstrata cross one another or meet at an angle, or mix with one another either byslow transitions or by violent convulsions, leaving many lacunae which can beno longer filled up, and often becoming so complex that no true explanation ofthem can be given. So in language there are the cross influences of meaning andsound, of logic and grammar, of differing analogies, of words and theinflexions of words, which often come into conflict with each other. Thegrammarian, if he were to form new words, would make them all of the samepattern according to what he conceives to be the rule, that is, the more commonusage of language. The subtlety of nature goes far beyond art, and it iscomplicated by irregularity, so that often we can hardly say that there is aright or wrong in the formation of words. For almost any formation which is notat variance with the first principles of language is possible and may bedefended.

The imperfection of language is really due to the formation and correlation ofwords by accident, that is to say, by principles which are unknown to us. Hencewe see why Plato, like ourselves unable to comprehend the whole of language,was constrained to “supplement the poor creature imitation by anotherpoor creature convention.” But the poor creature convention in the endproves too much for all the rest: for we do not ask what is the origin of wordsor whether they are formed according to a correct analogy, but what is theusage of them; and we are compelled to admit with Hermogenes in Plato and withHorace that usage is the ruling principle, “quem penes arbitrium est, etjus et norma loquendi.”

(8) There are two ways in which a language may attain permanence or fixity.First, it may have been embodied in poems or hymns or laws, which may berepeated for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years with a religiousaccuracy, so that to the priests or rhapsodists of a nation the whole or thegreater part of a language is literally preserved; secondly, it may be writtendown and in a written form distributed more or less widely among the wholenation. In either case the language which is familiarly spoken may have grownup wholly or in a great measure independently of them. (1) The first of theseprocesses has been sometimes attended by the result that the sound of the wordshas been carefully preserved and that the meaning of them has either perishedwholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the efforts of modern philology. Theverses have been repeated as a chant or part of a ritual, but they have had norelation to ordinary life or speech. (2) The invention of writing again iscommonly attributed to a particular epoch, and we are apt to think that such aninestimable gift would have immediately been diffused over a whole country. Butit may have taken a long time to perfect the art of writing, and another longperiod may have elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence onlanguage has been increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention ofprinting.

Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were onlydialects. So they continued to be in parts of the country in which writing wasnot used or in which there was no diffusion of literature. In most of thecounties of England there is still a provincial style, which has been sometimesmade by a great poet the vehicle of his fancies. When a book sinks into themind of a nation, such as Luther’s Bible or the Authorized EnglishTranslation of the Bible, or again great classical works like Shakspere orMilton, not only have new powers of expression been diffused through a wholenation, but a great step towards uniformity has been made. The instinct oflanguage demands regular grammar and correct spelling: these are imprinteddeeply on the tablets of a nation’s memory by a common use of classicaland popular writers. In our own day we have attained to a point at which nearlyevery printed book is spelt correctly and written grammatically.

(9) Proceeding further to trace the influence of literature on language we notesome other causes which have affected the higher use of it: such as (1) thenecessity of clearness and connexion; (2) the fear of tautology; (3) theinfluence of metre, rhythm, rhyme, and of the language of prose and verse uponone another; (4) the power of idiom and quotation; (5) the relativeness ofwords to one another.

It has been usual to depreciate modern languages when compared with ancient.The latter are regarded as furnishing a type of excellence to which the formercannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern languages, if through theloss of inflections and genders they lack some power or beauty orexpressiveness or precision which is possessed by the ancient, are in manyother respects superior to them: the thought is generally clearer, theconnexion closer, the sentence and paragraph are better distributed. The bestmodern languages, for example English or French, possess as great a power ofself-improvement as the Latin, if not as the Greek. Nor does there seem to beany reason why they should ever decline or decay. It is a popular remark thatour great writers are beginning to disappear: it may also be remarked thatwhenever a great writer appears in the future he will find the English languageas perfect and as ready for use as in the days of Shakspere or Milton. There isno reason to suppose that English or French will ever be reduced to the lowlevel of Modern Greek or of Mediaeval Latin. The wide diffusion of greatauthors would make such a decline impossible. Nor will modern languages beeasily broken up by amalgamation with each other. The distance between them istoo wide to be spanned, the differences are too great to be overcome, and theuse of printing makes it impossible that one of them should ever be lost inanother.

The structure of the English language differs greatly from that of either Latinor Greek. In the two latter, especially in Greek, sentences are joined togetherby connecting particles. They are distributed on the right hand and on the leftby men, de, alla, kaitoi, kai de and the like, or deduced from one another byara, de, oun, toinun and the like. In English the majority of sentences areindependent and in apposition to one another; they are laid side by side orslightly connected by the copula. But within the sentence the expression of thelogical relations of the clauses is closer and more exact: there is less ofapposition and participial structure. The sentences thus laid side by side arealso constructed into paragraphs; these again are less distinctly marked inGreek and Latin than in English. Generally French, German, and English have anadvantage over the classical languages in point of accuracy. The three concordsare more accurately observed in English than in either Greek or Latin. On theother hand, the extension of the familiar use of the masculine and femininegender to objects of sense and abstract ideas as well as to men and animals nodoubt lends a nameless grace to style which we have a difficulty inappreciating, and the possible variety in the order of words gives moreflexibility and also a kind of dignity to the period. Of the comparative effectof accent and quantity and of the relation between them in ancient and modernlanguages we are not able to judge.

Another quality in which modern are superior to ancient languages is freedomfrom tautology. No English style is thought tolerable in which, except for thesake of emphasis, the same words are repeated at short intervals. Of course thelength of the interval must depend on the character of the word. Striking wordsand expressions cannot be allowed to reappear, if at all, except at thedistance of a page or more. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions may or rathermust recur in successive lines. It seems to be a kind of impertinence to thereader and strikes unpleasantly both on the mind and on the ear that the samesounds should be used twice over, when another word or turn of expression wouldhave given a new shade of meaning to the thought and would have added apleasing variety to the sound. And the mind equally rejects the repetition ofthe word and the use of a mere synonym for it,—e.g. felicity andhappiness. The cultivated mind desires something more, which a skilful writeris easily able to supply out of his treasure-house.

The fear of tautology has doubtless led to the multiplications of words and themeanings of words, and generally to an enlargement of the vocabulary. It is avery early instinct of language; for ancient poetry is almost as free fromtautology as the best modern writings. The speech of young children, except inso far as they are compelled to repeat themselves by the fewness of theirwords, also escapes from it. When they grow up and have ideas which are beyondtheir powers of expression, especially in writing, tautology begins to appear.In like manner when language is “contaminated” by philosophy it isapt to become awkward, to stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow andfreedom. No philosophical writer with the exception of Plato, who is himselfnot free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any high degree ofliterary excellence.

To poetry the form and polish of language is chiefly to be attributed; and themost critical period in the history of language is the transition from verse toprose. At first mankind were contented to express their thoughts in a set formof words having a kind of rhythm; to which regularity was given by accent andquantity. But after a time they demanded a greater degree of freedom, and tothose who had all their life been hearing poetry the first introduction ofprose had the charm of novelty. The prose romances into which the Homeric Poemswere converted, for a while probably gave more delight to the hearers orreaders of them than the Poems themselves, and in time the relation of the twowas reversed: the poems which had once been a necessity of the human mindbecame a luxury: they were now superseded by prose, which in all succeedingages became the natural vehicle of expression to all mankind. Henceforwardprose and poetry formed each other. A comparatively slender link between themwas also furnished by proverbs. We may trace in poetry how the simplesuccession of lines, not without monotony, has passed into a complicatedperiod, and how in prose, rhythm and accent and the order of words and thebalance of clauses, sometimes not without a slight admixture of rhyme, make upa new kind of harmony, swelling into strains not less majestic than those ofHomer, Virgil, or Dante.

One of the most curious and characteristic features of language, affecting bothsyntax and style, is idiom. The meaning of the word “idiom” is thatwhich is peculiar, that which is familiar, the word or expression which strikesus or comes home to us, which is more readily understood or more easilyremembered. It is a quality which really exists in infinite degrees, which weturn into differences of kind by applying the term only to conspicuous andstriking examples of words or phrases which have this quality. It oftensupersedes the laws of language or the rules of grammar, or rather is to beregarded as another law of language which is natural and necessary. The word orphrase which has been repeated many times over is more intelligible andfamiliar to us than one which is rare, and our familiarity with it more thancompensates for incorrectness or inaccuracy in the use of it. Strikingexpressions also which have moved the hearts of nations or are the preciousstones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of idioms: they aretaken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from the proprieties oflanguage. Every one knows that we often put words together in a manner whichwould be intolerable if it were not idiomatic. We cannot argue either about themeaning of words or the use of constructions that because they are used in oneconnexion they will be legitimate in another, unless we allow for thisprinciple. We can bear to have words and sentences used in new senses or in anew order or even a little perverted in meaning when we are quite familiar withthem. Quotations are as often applied in a sense which the author did notintend as in that which he did. The parody of the words of Shakspere or of theBible, which has in it something of the nature of a lie, is far from unpleasingto us. The better known words, even if their meaning be perverted, are moreagreeable to us and have a greater power over us. Most of us have experienced asort of delight and feeling of curiosity when we first came across or when wefirst used for ourselves a new word or phrase or figure of speech.

There are associations of sound and of sense by which every word is linked toevery other. One letter harmonizes with another; every verb or noun derives itsmeaning, not only from itself, but from the words with which it is associated.Some reflection of them near or distant is embodied in it. In any new use of aword all the existing uses of it have to be considered. Upon these depends thequestion whether it will bear the proposed extension of meaning or not.According to the famous expression of Luther, “Words are livingcreatures, having hands and feet.” When they cease to retain this livingpower of adaptation, when they are only put together like the parts of a pieceof furniture, language becomes unpoetical, inexpressive, dead.

Grammars would lead us to suppose that words have a fixed form and sound.Lexicons assign to each word a definite meaning or meanings. They both tend toobscure the fact that the sentence precedes the word and that all language isrelative. (1) It is relative to its own context. Its meaning is modified bywhat has been said before and after in the same or in some other passage:without comparing the context we are not sure whether it is used in the samesense even in two successive sentences. (2) It is relative to facts, to time,place, and occasion: when they are already known to the hearer or reader, theymay be presupposed; there is no need to allude to them further. (3) It isrelative to the knowledge of the writer and reader or of the speaker andhearer. Except for the sake of order and consecutiveness nothing ought to beexpressed which is already commonly or universally known. A word or two may besufficient to give an intimation to a friend; a long or elaborate speech orcomposition is required to explain some new idea to a popular audience or tothe ordinary reader or to a young pupil. Grammars and dictionaries are not tobe despised; for in teaching we need clearness rather than subtlety. But wemust not therefore forget that there is also a higher ideal of language inwhich all is relative—sounds to sounds, words to words, the parts to thewhole—in which besides the lesser context of the book or speech, there isalso the larger context of history and circumstances.

The study of Comparative Philology has introduced into the world a new sciencewhich more than any other binds up man with nature, and distant ages andcountries with one another. It may be said to have thrown a light upon allother sciences and upon the nature of the human mind itself. The trueconception of it dispels many errors, not only of metaphysics and theology, butalso of natural knowledge. Yet it is far from certain that this newly-foundscience will continue to progress in the same surprising manner as heretofore;or that even if our materials are largely increased, we shall arrive at muchmore definite conclusions than at present. Like some other branches ofknowledge, it may be approaching a point at which it can no longer beprofitably studied. But at any rate it has brought back the philosophy oflanguage from theory to fact; it has passed out of the region of guesses andhypotheses, and has attained the dignity of an Inductive Science. And it is notwithout practical and political importance. It gives a new interest to distantand subject countries; it brings back the dawning light from one end of theearth to the other. Nations, like individuals, are better understood by us whenwe know something of their early life; and when they are better understood byus, we feel more kindly towards them. Lastly, we may remember that allknowledge is valuable for its own sake; and we may also hope that a deeperinsight into the nature of human speech will give us a greater command of itand enable us to make a nobler use of it.^[2]

[2]Compare again W. Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichenSprachbaues; M. Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language;Steinthal, Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft: and forthe latter part of the Essay, Delbruck, Study of Language; Paul’sPrinciples of the History of Language: to the latter work the author ofthis Essay is largely indebted.

CRATYLUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Hermogenes, Cratylus.

HERMOGENES: Suppose that we make Socrates a party to the argument?

CRATYLUS: If you please.

HERMOGENES: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus hasbeen arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not conventional;not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use; but that there is atruth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians.Whereupon I ask him, whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not,and he answers “Yes.” And Socrates? “Yes.” Then everyman’s name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this hereplies—“If all the world were to call you Hermogenes, that wouldnot be your name.” And when I am anxious to have a further explanation heis ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his ownabout the matter, if he would only tell, and could entirely convince me, if hechose to be intelligible. Tell me, Socrates, what this oracle means; or rathertell me, if you will be so good, what is your own view of the truth orcorrectness of names, which I would far sooner hear.

SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that “hard isthe knowledge of the good.” And the knowledge of names is a great part ofknowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma courseof the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar andlanguage—these are his own words—and then I should have been atonce able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed,I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore, I do not know thetruth about such matters; I will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus inthe investigation of them. When he declares that your name is not reallyHermogenes, I suspect that he is only making fun of you;—he means to saythat you are no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after afortune and never in luck. But, as I was saying, there is a good deal ofdifficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave thequestion open until we have heard both sides.

HERMOGENES: I have often talked over this matter, both with Cratylus andothers, and cannot convince myself that there is any principle of correctnessin names other than convention and agreement; any name which you give, in myopinion, is the right one, and if you change that and give another, the newname is as correct as the old—we frequently change the names of ourslaves, and the newly-imposed name is as good as the old: for there is no namegiven to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of theusers;—such is my view. But if I am mistaken I shall be happy to hear andlearn of Cratylus, or of any one else.

SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be right, Hermogenes: let us see;—Yourmeaning is, that the name of each thing is only that which anybody agrees tocall it?

HERMOGENES: That is my notion.

SOCRATES: Whether the giver of the name be an individual or a city?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Well, now, let me take an instance;—suppose that I call a man ahorse or a horse a man, you mean to say that a man will be rightly called ahorse by me individually, and rightly called a man by the rest of the world;and a horse again would be rightly called a man by me and a horse by theworld:—that is your meaning?

HERMOGENES: He would, according to my view.

SOCRATES: But how about truth, then? you would acknowledge that there is inwords a true and a false?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And there are true and false propositions?

HERMOGENES: To be sure.

SOCRATES: And a true proposition says that which is, and a false propositionsays that which is not?

HERMOGENES: Yes; what other answer is possible?

SOCRATES: Then in a proposition there is a true and false?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But is a proposition true as a whole only, and are the parts untrue?

HERMOGENES: No; the parts are true as well as the whole.

SOCRATES: Would you say the large parts and not the smaller ones, or everypart?

HERMOGENES: I should say that every part is true.

SOCRATES: Is a proposition resolvable into any part smaller than a name?

HERMOGENES: No; that is the smallest.

SOCRATES: Then the name is a part of the true proposition?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Yes, and a true part, as you say.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And is not the part of a falsehood also a falsehood?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then, if propositions may be true and false, names may be true andfalse?

HERMOGENES: So we must infer.

SOCRATES: And the name of anything is that which any one affirms to be thename?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And will there be so many names of each thing as everybody says thatthere are? and will they be true names at the time of uttering them?

HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates, I can conceive no correctness of names other thanthis; you give one name, and I another; and in different cities and countriesthere are different names for the same things; Hellenes differ from barbariansin their use of names, and the several Hellenic tribes from one another.

SOCRATES: But would you say, Hermogenes, that the things differ as the namesdiffer? and are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us? For hesays that man is the measure of all things, and that things are to me as theyappear to me, and that they are to you as they appear to you. Do you agree withhim, or would you say that things have a permanent essence of their own?

HERMOGENES: There have been times, Socrates, when I have been driven in myperplexity to take refuge with Protagoras; not that I agree with him at all.

SOCRATES: What! have you ever been driven to admit that there was no such thingas a bad man?

HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but I have often had reason to think that there arevery bad men, and a good many of them.

SOCRATES: Well, and have you ever found any very good ones?

HERMOGENES: Not many.

SOCRATES: Still you have found them?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And would you hold that the very good were the very wise, and thevery evil very foolish? Would that be your view?

HERMOGENES: It would.

SOCRATES: But if Protagoras is right, and the truth is that things are as theyappear to any one, how can some of us be wise and some of us foolish?

HERMOGENES: Impossible.

SOCRATES: And if, on the other hand, wisdom and folly are reallydistinguishable, you will allow, I think, that the assertion of Protagoras canhardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one mancannot in reality be wiser than another.

HERMOGENES: He cannot.

SOCRATES: Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus, that all thingsequally belong to all men at the same moment and always; for neither on hisview can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and vice are alwaysequally to be attributed to all.

HERMOGENES: There cannot.

SOCRATES: But if neither is right, and things are not relative to individuals,and all things do not equally belong to all at the same moment and always, theymust be supposed to have their own proper and permanent essence: they are notin relation to us, or influenced by us, fluctuating according to our fancy, butthey are independent, and maintain to their own essence the relation prescribedby nature.

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you have said the truth.

SOCRATES: Does what I am saying apply only to the things themselves, or equallyto the actions which proceed from them? Are not actions also a class of being?

HERMOGENES: Yes, the actions are real as well as the things.

SOCRATES: Then the actions also are done according to their proper nature, andnot according to our opinion of them? In cutting, for example, we do not cut aswe please, and with any chance instrument; but we cut with the properinstrument only, and according to the natural process of cutting; and thenatural process is right and will succeed, but any other will fail and be of nouse at all.

HERMOGENES: I should say that the natural way is the right way.

SOCRATES: Again, in burning, not every way is the right way; but the right wayis the natural way, and the right instrument the natural instrument.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And this holds good of all actions?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And speech is a kind of action?

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And will a man speak correctly who speaks as he pleases? Will not thesuccessful speaker rather be he who speaks in the natural way of speaking, andas things ought to be spoken, and with the natural instrument? Any other modeof speaking will result in error and failure.

HERMOGENES: I quite agree with you.

SOCRATES: And is not naming a part of speaking? for in giving names men speak.

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: And if speaking is a sort of action and has a relation to acts, isnot naming also a sort of action?

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And we saw that actions were not relative to ourselves, but had aspecial nature of their own?

HERMOGENES: Precisely.

SOCRATES: Then the argument would lead us to infer that names ought to be givenaccording to a natural process, and with a proper instrument, and not at ourpleasure: in this and no other way shall we name with success.

HERMOGENES: I agree.

SOCRATES: But again, that which has to be cut has to be cut with something?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And that which has to be woven or pierced has to be woven or piercedwith something?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And that which has to be named has to be named with something?

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: What is that with which we pierce?

HERMOGENES: An awl.

SOCRATES: And with which we weave?

HERMOGENES: A shuttle.

SOCRATES: And with which we name?

HERMOGENES: A name.

SOCRATES: Very good: then a name is an instrument?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Suppose that I ask, “What sort of instrument is ashuttle?” And you answer, “A weaving instrument.”

HERMOGENES: Well.

SOCRATES: And I ask again, “What do we do when we weave?”—Theanswer is, that we separate or disengage the warp from the woof.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And may not a similar description be given of an awl, and ofinstruments in general?

HERMOGENES: To be sure.

SOCRATES: And now suppose that I ask a similar question about names: will youanswer me? Regarding the name as an instrument, what do we do when we name?

HERMOGENES: I cannot say.

SOCRATES: Do we not give information to one another, and distinguish thingsaccording to their natures?

HERMOGENES: Certainly we do.

SOCRATES: Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishingnatures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing the threads of the web.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the shuttle is the instrument of the weaver?

HERMOGENES: Assuredly.

SOCRATES: Then the weaver will use the shuttle well—and well means like aweaver? and the teacher will use the name well—and well means like ateacher?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And when the weaver uses the shuttle, whose work will he be usingwell?

HERMOGENES: That of the carpenter.

SOCRATES: And is every man a carpenter, or the skilled only?

HERMOGENES: Only the skilled.

SOCRATES: And when the piercer uses the awl, whose work will he be using well?

HERMOGENES: That of the smith.

SOCRATES: And is every man a smith, or only the skilled?

HERMOGENES: The skilled only.

SOCRATES: And when the teacher uses the name, whose work will he be using?

HERMOGENES: There again I am puzzled.

SOCRATES: Cannot you at least say who gives us the names which we use?

HERMOGENES: Indeed I cannot.

SOCRATES: Does not the law seem to you to give us them?

HERMOGENES: Yes, I suppose so.

SOCRATES: Then the teacher, when he gives us a name, uses the work of thelegislator?

HERMOGENES: I agree.

SOCRATES: And is every man a legislator, or the skilled only?

HERMOGENES: The skilled only.

SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, not every man is able to give a name, but only amaker of names; and this is the legislator, who of all skilled artisans in theworld is the rarest.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And how does the legislator make names? and to what does he look?Consider this in the light of the previous instances: to what does thecarpenter look in making the shuttle? Does he not look to that which isnaturally fitted to act as a shuttle?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And suppose the shuttle to be broken in making, will he make another,looking to the broken one? or will he look to the form according to which hemade the other?

HERMOGENES: To the latter, I should imagine.

SOCRATES: Might not that be justly called the true or ideal shuttle?

HERMOGENES: I think so.

SOCRATES: And whatever shuttles are wanted, for the manufacture of garments,thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen, or other material, ought all of them to havethe true form of the shuttle; and whatever is the shuttle best adapted to eachkind of work, that ought to be the form which the maker produces in each case.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same holds of other instruments: when a man has discoveredthe instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he must express thisnatural form, and not others which he fancies, in the material, whatever it maybe, which he employs; for example, he ought to know how to put into iron theforms of awls adapted by nature to their several uses?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And how to put into wood forms of shuttles adapted by nature to theiruses?

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: For the several forms of shuttles naturally answer to the severalkinds of webs; and this is true of instruments in general.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then, as to names: ought not our legislator also to know how to putthe true natural name of each thing into sounds and syllables, and to make andgive all names with a view to the ideal name, if he is to be a namer in anytrue sense? And we must remember that different legislators will not use thesame syllables. For neither does every smith, although he may be making thesame instrument for the same purpose, make them all of the same iron. The formmust be the same, but the material may vary, and still the instrument may beequally good of whatever iron made, whether in Hellas or in a foreigncountry;—there is no difference.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And the legislator, whether he be Hellene or barbarian, is nottherefore to be deemed by you a worse legislator, provided he gives the trueand proper form of the name in whatever syllables; this or that country makesno matter.

HERMOGENES: Quite true.

SOCRATES: But who then is to determine whether the proper form is given to theshuttle, whatever sort of wood may be used? the carpenter who makes, or theweaver who is to use them?

HERMOGENES: I should say, he who is to use them, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And who uses the work of the lyre-maker? Will not he be the man whoknows how to direct what is being done, and who will know also whether the workis being well done or not?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And who is he?

HERMOGENES: The player of the lyre.

SOCRATES: And who will direct the shipwright?

HERMOGENES: The pilot.

SOCRATES: And who will be best able to direct the legislator in his work, andwill know whether the work is well done, in this or any other country? Will notthe user be the man?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And this is he who knows how to ask questions?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And how to answer them?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And him who knows how to ask and answer you would call adialectician?

HERMOGENES: Yes; that would be his name.

SOCRATES: Then the work of the carpenter is to make a rudder, and the pilot hasto direct him, if the rudder is to be well made.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And the work of the legislator is to give names, and the dialecticianmust be his director if the names are to be rightly given?

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, I should say that this giving of names can be nosuch light matter as you fancy, or the work of light or chance persons; andCratylus is right in saying that things have names by nature, and that notevery man is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name whicheach thing by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things inletters and syllables.

HERMOGENES: I cannot answer you, Socrates; but I find a difficulty in changingmy opinion all in a moment, and I think that I should be more readilypersuaded, if you would show me what this is which you term the natural fitnessof names.

SOCRATES: My good Hermogenes, I have none to show. Was I not telling you justnow (but you have forgotten), that I knew nothing, and proposing to share theenquiry with you? But now that you and I have talked over the matter, a stephas been gained; for we have discovered that names have by nature a truth, andthat not every man knows how to give a thing a name.

HERMOGENES: Very good.

SOCRATES: And what is the nature of this truth or correctness of names? That,if you care to know, is the next question.

HERMOGENES: Certainly, I care to know.

SOCRATES: Then reflect.

HERMOGENES: How shall I reflect?

SOCRATES: The true way is to have the assistance of those who know, and youmust pay them well both in money and in thanks; these are the Sophists, of whomyour brother, Callias, has—rather dearly—bought the reputation ofwisdom. But you have not yet come into your inheritance, and therefore you hadbetter go to him, and beg and entreat him to tell you what he has learnt fromProtagoras about the fitness of names.

HERMOGENES: But how inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating Protagorasand his truth (“Truth” was the title of the book of Protagoras;compare Theaet.), I were to attach any value to what he and his book affirm!

SOCRATES: Then if you despise him, you must learn of Homer and the poets.

HERMOGENES: And where does Homer say anything about names, and what does hesay?

SOCRATES: He often speaks of them; notably and nobly in the places where hedistinguishes the different names which Gods and men give to the same things.Does he not in these passages make a remarkable statement about the correctnessof names? For the Gods must clearly be supposed to call things by their rightand natural names; do you not think so?

HERMOGENES: Why, of course they call them rightly, if they call them at all.But to what are you referring?

SOCRATES: Do you not know what he says about the river in Troy who had a singlecombat with Hephaestus?

“Whom,” as he says, “the Gods call Xanthus, and men callScamander.”

HERMOGENES: I remember.

SOCRATES: Well, and about this river—to know that he ought to be calledXanthus and not Scamander—is not that a solemn lesson? Or about the birdwhich, as he says,

“The Gods call Chalcis, and men Cymindis:”

to be taught how much more correct the name Chalcis is than the nameCymindis—do you deem that a light matter? Or about Batieia and Myrina?(Compare Il. “The hill which men call Batieia and the immortals the tombof the sportive Myrina.”) And there are many other observations of thesame kind in Homer and other poets. Now, I think that this is beyond theunderstanding of you and me; but the names of Scamandrius and Astyanax, whichhe affirms to have been the names of Hector’s son, are more within therange of human faculties, as I am disposed to think; and what the poet means bycorrectness may be more readily apprehended in that instance: you will rememberI dare say the lines to which I refer? (Il.)

HERMOGENES: I do.

SOCRATES: Let me ask you, then, which did Homer think the more correct of thenames given to Hector’s son—Astyanax or Scamandrius?

HERMOGENES: I do not know.

SOCRATES: How would you answer, if you were asked whether the wise or theunwise are more likely to give correct names?

HERMOGENES: I should say the wise, of course.

SOCRATES: And are the men or the women of a city, taken as a class, the wiser?

HERMOGENES: I should say, the men.

SOCRATES: And Homer, as you know, says that the Trojan men called him Astyanax(king of the city); but if the men called him Astyanax, the other name ofScamandrius could only have been given to him by the women.

HERMOGENES: That may be inferred.

SOCRATES: And must not Homer have imagined the Trojans to be wiser than theirwives?

HERMOGENES: To be sure.

SOCRATES: Then he must have thought Astyanax to be a more correct name for theboy than Scamandrius?

HERMOGENES: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And what is the reason of this? Let us consider:—does he nothimself suggest a very good reason, when he says,

“For he alone defended their city and long walls”?

This appears to be a good reason for calling the son of the saviour king of thecity which his father was saving, as Homer observes.

HERMOGENES: I see.

SOCRATES: Why, Hermogenes, I do not as yet see myself; and do you?

HERMOGENES: No, indeed; not I.

SOCRATES: But tell me, friend, did not Homer himself also give Hector his name?

HERMOGENES: What of that?

SOCRATES: The name appears to me to be very nearly the same as the name ofAstyanax—both are Hellenic; and a king (anax) and a holder (ektor) havenearly the same meaning, and are both descriptive of a king; for a man isclearly the holder of that of which he is king; he rules, and owns, and holdsit. But, perhaps, you may think that I am talking nonsense; and indeed Ibelieve that I myself did not know what I meant when I imagined that I hadfound some indication of the opinion of Homer about the correctness of names.

HERMOGENES: I assure you that I think otherwise, and I believe you to be on theright track.

SOCRATES: There is reason, I think, in calling the lion’s whelp a lion,and the foal of a horse a horse; I am speaking only of the ordinary course ofnature, when an animal produces after his kind, and not of extraordinarybirths;—if contrary to nature a horse have a calf, then I should not callthat a foal but a calf; nor do I call any inhuman birth a man, but only anatural birth. And the same may be said of trees and other things. Do you agreewith me?

HERMOGENES: Yes, I agree.

SOCRATES: Very good. But you had better watch me and see that I do not playtricks with you. For on the same principle the son of a king is to be called aking. And whether the syllables of the name are the same or not the same, makesno difference, provided the meaning is retained; nor does the addition orsubtraction of a letter make any difference so long as the essence of the thingremains in possession of the name and appears in it.

HERMOGENES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: A very simple matter. I may illustrate my meaning by the names ofletters, which you know are not the same as the letters themselves with theexception of the four epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega; the names of the rest,whether vowels or consonants, are made up of other letters which we add tothem; but so long as we introduce the meaning, and there can be no mistake, thename of the letter is quite correct. Take, for example, the letterbeta—the addition of eta, tau, alpha, gives no offence, and does notprevent the whole name from having the value which the legislatorintended—so well did he know how to give the letters names.

HERMOGENES: I believe you are right.

SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of a king? a king will often be the sonof a king, the good son or the noble son of a good or noble sire; and similarlythe offspring of every kind, in the regular course of nature, is like theparent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be disguiseduntil they appear different to the ignorant person, and he may not recognizethem, although they are the same, just as any one of us would not recognize thesame drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to thephysician, who regards the power of them, they are the same, and he is not putout by the addition; and in like manner the etymologist is not put out by theaddition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or indeed by thechange of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the meaning. As wasjust now said, the names of Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike,which is tau, and yet they have the same meaning. And how little in common withthe letters of their names has Archepolis (ruler of the city)—and yet themeaning is the same. And there are many other names which just mean“king.” Again, there are several names for a general, as, forexample, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (goodwarrior); and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) andAcesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and there are many others which might becited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same meaning.Would you not say so?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: The same names, then, ought to be assigned to those who follow in thecourse of nature?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And what of those who follow out of the course of nature, and areprodigies? for example, when a good and religious man has an irreligious son,he ought to bear the name not of his father, but of the class to which hebelongs, just as in the case which was before supposed of a horse foaling acalf.

HERMOGENES: Quite true.

SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be calledirreligious?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: He should not be called Theophilus (beloved of God) or Mnesitheus(mindful of God), or any of these names: if names are correctly given, hisshould have an opposite meaning.

HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Again, Hermogenes, there is Orestes (the man of the mountains) whoappears to be rightly called; whether chance gave the name, or perhaps somepoet who meant to express the brutality and fierceness and mountain wildness ofhis hero’s nature.

HERMOGENES: That is very likely, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And his father’s name is also according to nature.

HERMOGENES: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Yes, for as his name, so also is his nature; Agamemnon (admirable forremaining) is one who is patient and persevering in the accomplishment of hisresolves, and by his virtue crowns them; and his continuance at Troy with allthe vast army is a proof of that admirable endurance in him which is signifiedby the name Agamemnon. I also think that Atreus is rightly called; for hismurder of Chrysippus and his exceeding cruelty to Thyestes are damaging anddestructive to his reputation—the name is a little altered and disguisedso as not to be intelligible to every one, but to the etymologist there is nodifficulty in seeing the meaning, for whether you think of him as ateires thestubborn, or as atrestos the fearless, or as ateros the destructive one, thename is perfectly correct in every point of view. And I think that Pelops isalso named appropriately; for, as the name implies, he is rightly called Pelopswho sees what is near only (o ta pelas oron).

HERMOGENES: How so?

SOCRATES: Because, according to the tradition, he had no forethought orforesight of all the evil which the murder of Myrtilus would entail upon hiswhole race in remote ages; he saw only what was at hand and immediate,—orin other words, pelas (near), in his eagerness to win Hippodamia by all meansfor his bride. Every one would agree that the name of Tantalus is rightly givenand in accordance with nature, if the traditions about him are true.

HERMOGENES: And what are the traditions?

SOCRATES: Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in hislife—last of all, came the utter ruin of his country; and after his deathhe had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the worldbelow—all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imaginethat some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down bymisfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus; and into thisform, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The nameof Zeus, who is his alleged father, has also an excellent meaning, althoughhard to be understood, because really like a sentence, which is divided intotwo parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use theother half call him Dia; the two together signify the nature of the God, andthe business of a name, as we were saying, is to express the nature. For thereis none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and kingof all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name,although divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life(di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence, at firstsight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for stupidity), and wemight rather expect Zeus to be the child of a mighty intellect. Which is thefact; for this is the meaning of his father’s name: Kronos quasi Koros(Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a youth, but signifying to chatharonchai acheraton tou nou, the pure and garnished mind (sc. apo tou chorein). He,as we are informed by tradition, was begotten of Uranus, rightly so called (apotou oran ta ano) from looking upwards; which, as philosophers tell us, is theway to have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore correct. If I couldremember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried moreconclusions of the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the Gods,—then Imight have seen whether this wisdom, which has come to me all in an instant, Iknow not whence, will or will not hold good to the end.

HERMOGENES: You seem to me, Socrates, to be quite like a prophet newlyinspired, and to be uttering oracles.

SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and I believe that I caught the inspiration from thegreat Euthyphro of the Prospaltian deme, who gave me a long lecture whichcommenced at dawn: he talked and I listened, and his wisdom and enchantingravishment has not only filled my ears but taken possession of my soul, andto-day I shall let his superhuman power work and finish the investigation ofnames—that will be the way; but to-morrow, if you are so disposed, wewill conjure him away, and make a purgation of him, if we can only find somepriest or sophist who is skilled in purifications of this sort.

HERMOGENES: With all my heart; for am very curious to hear the rest of theenquiry about names.

SOCRATES: Then let us proceed; and where would you have us begin, now that wehave got a sort of outline of the enquiry? Are there any names which witness ofthemselves that they are not given arbitrarily, but have a natural fitness? Thenames of heroes and of men in general are apt to be deceptive because they areoften called after ancestors with whose names, as we were saying, they may haveno business; or they are the expression of a wish like Eutychides (the son ofgood fortune), or Sosias (the Saviour), or Theophilus (the beloved of God), andothers. But I think that we had better leave these, for there will be morechance of finding correctness in the names of immutable essences;—thereought to have been more care taken about them when they were named, and perhapsthere may have been some more than human power at work occasionally in givingthem names.

HERMOGENES: I think so, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the Gods, and showthat they are rightly named Gods?

HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be well.

SOCRATES: My notion would be something of this sort:—I suspect that thesun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the Gods of manybarbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing thatthey were always moving and running, from their running nature they were calledGods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became acquainted with theother Gods, they proceeded to apply the same name to them all. Do you thinkthat likely?

HERMOGENES: I think it very likely indeed.

SOCRATES: What shall follow the Gods?

HERMOGENES: Must not demons and heroes and men come next?

SOCRATES: Demons! And what do you consider to be the meaning of this word? Tellme if my view is right.

HERMOGENES: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: You know how Hesiod uses the word?

HERMOGENES: I do not.

SOCRATES: Do you not remember that he speaks of a golden race of men who camefirst?

HERMOGENES: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: He says of them—

“But now that fate has closed over this race They are holy demons uponthe earth, Beneficent, averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.”(Hesiod, Works and Days.)

HERMOGENES: What is the inference?

SOCRATES: What is the inference! Why, I suppose that he means by the goldenmen, not men literally made of gold, but good and noble; and I am convinced ofthis, because he further says that we are the iron race.

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: And do you not suppose that good men of our own day would by him besaid to be of golden race?

HERMOGENES: Very likely.

SOCRATES: And are not the good wise?

HERMOGENES: Yes, they are wise.

SOCRATES: And therefore I have the most entire conviction that he called themdemons, because they were daemones (knowing or wise), and in our older Atticdialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets say truly, that when agood man dies he has honour and a mighty portion among the dead, and becomes ademon; which is a name given to him signifying wisdom. And I say too, thatevery wise man who happens to be a good man is more than human (daimonion) bothin life and death, and is rightly called a demon.

HERMOGENES: Then I rather think that I am of one mind with you; but what is themeaning of the word “hero”? (Eros with an eta, in the old writingeros with an epsilon.)

SOCRATES: I think that there is no difficulty in explaining, for the name isnot much altered, and signifies that they were born of love.

HERMOGENES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Do you not know that the heroes are demigods?

HERMOGENES: What then?

SOCRATES: All of them sprang either from the love of a God for a mortal woman,or of a mortal man for a Goddess; think of the word in the old Attic, and youwill see better that the name heros is only a slight alteration of Eros, fromwhom the heroes sprang: either this is the meaning, or, if not this, then theymust have been skilful as rhetoricians and dialecticians, and able to put thequestion (erotan), for eirein is equivalent to legein. And therefore, as I wassaying, in the Attic dialect the heroes turn out to be rhetoricians andquestioners. All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a tribe ofsophists and rhetors. But can you tell me why men are calledanthropoi?—that is more difficult.

HERMOGENES: No, I cannot; and I would not try even if I could, because I thinkthat you are the more likely to succeed.

SOCRATES: That is to say, you trust to the inspiration of Euthyphro.

HERMOGENES: Of course.

SOCRATES: Your faith is not vain; for at this very moment a new and ingeniousthought strikes me, and, if I am not careful, before to-morrow’s dawn Ishall be wiser than I ought to be. Now, attend to me; and first, remember thatwe often put in and pull out letters in words, and give names as we please andchange the accents. Take, for example, the word Dii Philos; in order to convertthis from a sentence into a noun, we omit one of the iotas and sound the middlesyllable grave instead of acute; as, on the other hand, letters are sometimesinserted in words instead of being omitted, and the acute takes the place ofthe grave.

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: The name anthropos, which was once a sentence, and is now a noun,appears to be a case just of this sort, for one letter, which is the alpha, hasbeen omitted, and the acute on the last syllable has been changed to a grave.

HERMOGENES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean to say that the word “man” implies that otheranimals never examine, or consider, or look up at what they see, but that mannot only sees (opope) but considers and looks up at that which he sees, andhence he alone of all animals is rightly anthropos, meaning anathron a opopen.

HERMOGENES: May I ask you to examine another word about which I am curious?

SOCRATES: Certainly.

HERMOGENES: I will take that which appears to me to follow next in order. Youknow the distinction of soul and body?

SOCRATES: Of course.

HERMOGENES: Let us endeavour to analyze them like the previous words.

SOCRATES: You want me first of all to examine the natural fitness of the wordpsuche (soul), and then of the word soma (body)?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: If I am to say what occurs to me at the moment, I should imagine thatthose who first used the name psuche meant to express that the soul when in thebody is the source of life, and gives the power of breath and revival(anapsuchon), and when this reviving power fails then the body perishes anddies, and this, if I am not mistaken, they called psyche. But please stay amoment; I fancy that I can discover something which will be more acceptable tothe disciples of Euthyphro, for I am afraid that they will scorn thisexplanation. What do you say to another?

HERMOGENES: Let me hear.

SOCRATES: What is that which holds and carries and gives life and motion to theentire nature of the body? What else but the soul?

HERMOGENES: Just that.

SOCRATES: And do you not believe with Anaxagoras, that mind or soul is theordering and containing principle of all things?

HERMOGENES: Yes; I do.

SOCRATES: Then you may well call that power phuseche which carries and holdsnature (e phusin okei, kai ekei), and this may be refined away into psuche.

HERMOGENES: Certainly; and this derivation is, I think, more scientific thanthe other.

SOCRATES: It is so; but I cannot help laughing, if I am to suppose that thiswas the true meaning of the name.

HERMOGENES: But what shall we say of the next word?

SOCRATES: You mean soma (the body).

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: That may be variously interpreted; and yet more variously if a littlepermutation is allowed. For some say that the body is the grave (sema) of thesoul which may be thought to be buried in our present life; or again the indexof the soul, because the soul gives indications to (semainei) the body;probably the Orphic poets were the inventors of the name, and they were underthe impression that the soul is suffering the punishment of sin, and that thebody is an enclosure or prison in which the soul is incarcerated, kept safe(soma, sozetai), as the name soma implies, until the penalty is paid; accordingto this view, not even a letter of the word need be changed.

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of this class of words.But have we any more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that which youwere giving of Zeus? I should like to know whether any similar principle ofcorrectness is to be applied to them.

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, Hermogenes; and there is one excellent principle which,as men of sense, we must acknowledge,—that of the Gods we know nothing,either of their natures or of the names which they give themselves; but we aresure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, aretrue. And this is the best of all principles; and the next best is to say, asin prayers, that we will call them by any sort or kind of names or patronymicswhich they like, because we do not know of any other. That also, I think, is avery good custom, and one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then, ifyou please, in the first place announce to them that we are not enquiring aboutthem; we do not presume that we are able to do so; but we are enquiring aboutthe meaning of men in giving them these names,—in this there can be smallblame.

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are quite right, and I would like to doas you say.

SOCRATES: Shall we begin, then, with Hestia, according to custom?

HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be very proper.

SOCRATES: What may we suppose him to have meant who gave the name Hestia?

HERMOGENES: That is another and certainly a most difficult question.

SOCRATES: My dear Hermogenes, the first imposers of names must surely have beenconsiderable persons; they were philosophers, and had a good deal to say.

HERMOGENES: Well, and what of them?

SOCRATES: They are the men to whom I should attribute the imposition of names.Even in foreign names, if you analyze them, a meaning is still discernible. Forexample, that which we term ousia is by some called esia, and by others againosia. Now that the essence of things should be called estia, which is akin tothe first of these (esia = estia), is rational enough. And there is reason inthe Athenians calling that estia which participates in ousia. For in ancienttimes we too seem to have said esia for ousia, and this you may note to havebeen the idea of those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered toestia, which was natural enough if they meant that estia was the essence ofthings. Those again who read osia seem to have inclined to the opinion ofHeracleitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them the pushingprinciple (othoun) is the cause and ruling power of all things, and istherefore rightly called osia. Enough of this, which is all that we who knownothing can affirm. Next in order after Hestia we ought to consider Rhea andCronos, although the name of Cronos has been already discussed. But I dare saythat I am talking great nonsense.

HERMOGENES: Why, Socrates?

SOCRATES: My good friend, I have discovered a hive of wisdom.

HERMOGENES: Of what nature?

SOCRATES: Well, rather ridiculous, and yet plausible.

HERMOGENES: How plausible?

SOCRATES: I fancy to myself Heracleitus repeating wise traditions of antiquityas old as the days of Cronos and Rhea, and of which Homer also spoke.

HERMOGENES: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion andnothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that youcannot go into the same water twice.

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names ofCronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty much in thedoctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of streams to both of thempurely accidental? Compare the line in which Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiodalso, tells of

“Ocean, the origin of Gods, and mother Tethys (Il.—the line is notfound in the extant works of Hesiod.).”

And again, Orpheus says, that

“The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused hissister Tethys, who was his mother’s daughter.”

You see that this is a remarkable coincidence, and all in the direction ofHeracleitus.

HERMOGENES: I think that there is something in what you say, Socrates; but I donot understand the meaning of the name Tethys.

SOCRATES: Well, that is almost self-explained, being only the name of a spring,a little disguised; for that which is strained and filtered (diattomenon,ethoumenon) may be likened to a spring, and the name Tethys is made up of thesetwo words.

HERMOGENES: The idea is ingenious, Socrates.

SOCRATES: To be sure. But what comes next?—of Zeus we have spoken.

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then let us next take his two brothers, Poseidon and Pluto, whetherthe latter is called by that or by his other name.

HERMOGENES: By all means.

SOCRATES: Poseidon is Posidesmos, the chain of the feet; the original inventorof the name had been stopped by the watery element in his walks, and notallowed to go on, and therefore he called the ruler of this element Poseidon;the epsilon was probably inserted as an ornament. Yet, perhaps, not so; but thename may have been originally written with a double lamda and not with a sigma,meaning that the God knew many things (Polla eidos). And perhaps also he beingthe shaker of the earth, has been named from shaking (seiein), and then pi anddelta have been added. Pluto gives wealth (Ploutos), and his name means thegiver of wealth, which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appearto imagine that the term Hades is connected with the invisible (aeides) and sothey are led by their fears to call the God Pluto instead.

HERMOGENES: And what is the true derivation?

SOCRATES: In spite of the mistakes which are made about the power of thisdeity, and the foolish fears which people have of him, such as the fear ofalways being with him after death, and of the soul denuded of the body going tohim (compare Rep.), my belief is that all is quite consistent, and that theoffice and name of the God really correspond.

HERMOGENES: Why, how is that?

SOCRATES: I will tell you my own opinion; but first, I should like to ask youwhich chain does any animal feel to be the stronger? and which confines himmore to the same spot,—desire or necessity?

HERMOGENES: Desire, Socrates, is stronger far.

SOCRATES: And do you not think that many a one would escape from Hades, if hedid not bind those who depart to him by the strongest of chains?

HERMOGENES: Assuredly they would.

SOCRATES: And if by the greatest of chains, then by some desire, as I shouldcertainly infer, and not by necessity?

HERMOGENES: That is clear.

SOCRATES: And there are many desires?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And therefore by the greatest desire, if the chain is to be thegreatest?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And is any desire stronger than the thought that you will be madebetter by associating with another?

HERMOGENES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And is not that the reason, Hermogenes, why no one, who has been tohim, is willing to come back to us? Even the Sirens, like all the rest of theworld, have been laid under his spells. Such a charm, as I imagine, is the Godable to infuse into his words. And, according to this view, he is the perfectand accomplished Sophist, and the great benefactor of the inhabitants of theother world; and even to us who are upon earth he sends from below exceedingblessings. For he has much more than he wants down there; wherefore he iscalled Pluto (or the rich). Note also, that he will have nothing to do with menwhile they are in the body, but only when the soul is liberated from thedesires and evils of the body. Now there is a great deal of philosophy andreflection in that; for in their liberated state he can bind them with thedesire of virtue, but while they are flustered and maddened by the body, noteven father Cronos himself would suffice to keep them with him in his ownfar-famed chains.

HERMOGENES: There is a deal of truth in what you say.

SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and the legislator called him Hades, not from theunseen (aeides)—far otherwise, but from his knowledge (eidenai) of allnoble things.

HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and Apollo, andAthene, and Hephaestus, and Ares, and the other deities?

SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here is thelovely one (erate)—for Zeus, according to tradition, loved and marriedher; possibly also the name may have been given when the legislator wasthinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer), puttingthe end in the place of the beginning. You will recognize the truth of this ifyou repeat the letters of Here several times over. People dread the name ofPherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo,—and with as little reason;the fear, if I am not mistaken, only arises from their ignorance of the natureof names. But they go changing the name into Phersephone, and they areterrified at this; whereas the new name means only that the Goddess is wise(sophe); for seeing that all things in the world are in motion (pheromenon),that principle which embraces and touches and is able to follow them, iswisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe (Pherepapha),or some name like it, because she touches that which is in motion (toupheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And Hades, who is wise,consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter her name into Pherephattanow-a-days, because the present generation care for euphony more than truth.There is the other name, Apollo, which, as I was saying, is generally supposedto have some terrible signification. Have you remarked this fact?

HERMOGENES: To be sure I have, and what you say is true.

SOCRATES: But the name, in my opinion, is really most expressive of the powerof the God.

HERMOGENES: How so?

SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain, for I do not believe that any singlename could have been better adapted to express the attributes of the God,embracing and in a manner signifying all four of them,—music, andprophecy, and medicine, and archery.

HERMOGENES: That must be a strange name, and I should like to hear theexplanation.

SOCRATES: Say rather an harmonious name, as beseems the God of Harmony. In thefirst place, the purgations and purifications which doctors and diviners use,and their fumigations with drugs magical or medicinal, as well as theirwashings and lustral sprinklings, have all one and the same object, which is tomake a man pure both in body and soul.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And is not Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the absolver fromall impurities?

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as being thephysician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon (purifier); or inrespect of his powers of divination, and his truth and sincerity, which is thesame as truth, he may be most fitly called Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as inthe Thessalian dialect, for all the Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aeiBallon (always shooting), because he is a master archer who never misses; oragain, the name may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as inakolouthos, and akoitis, and in many other words the alpha is supposed to mean“together,” so the meaning of the name Apollo will be “movingtogether,” whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in theharmony of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by anharmonious power, as astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare. And he isthe God who presides over harmony, and makes all things move together, bothamong Gods and among men. And as in the words akolouthos and akoitis the alphais substituted for an omicron, so the name Apollon is equivalent to omopolon;only the second lambda is added in order to avoid the ill-omened sound ofdestruction (apolon). Now the suspicion of this destructive power still hauntsthe minds of some who do not consider the true value of the name, which, as Iwas saying just now, has reference to all the powers of the God, who is thesingle one, the everdarting, the purifier, the mover together (aplous, aeiBallon, apolouon, omopolon). The name of the Muses and of music would seem tobe derived from their making philosophical enquiries (mosthai); and Leto iscalled by this name, because she is such a gentle Goddess, and so willing(ethelemon) to grant our requests; or her name may be Letho, as she is oftencalled by strangers—they seem to imply by it her amiability, and hersmooth and easy-going way of behaving. Artemis is named from her healthy(artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of her love of virginity, perhapsbecause she is a proficient in virtue (arete), and perhaps also as hatingintercourse of the sexes (ton aroton misesasa). He who gave the Goddess hername may have had any or all of these reasons.

HERMOGENES: What is the meaning of Dionysus and Aphrodite?

SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, you ask a solemn question; there is a serious andalso a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious explanation isnot to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetiousone; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver ofwine), Didoinusos, as he might be called in fun,—and oinos is properlyoionous, because wine makes those who drink, think (oiesthai) that they have amind (noun) when they have none. The derivation of Aphrodite, born of the foam(aphros), may be fairly accepted on the authority of Hesiod.

HERMOGENES: Still there remains Athene, whom you, Socrates, as an Athenian,will surely not forget; there are also Hephaestus and Ares.

SOCRATES: I am not likely to forget them.

HERMOGENES: No, indeed.

SOCRATES: There is no difficulty in explaining the other appellation of Athene.

HERMOGENES: What other appellation?

SOCRATES: We call her Pallas.

HERMOGENES: To be sure.

SOCRATES: And we cannot be wrong in supposing that this is derived from armeddances. For the elevation of oneself or anything else above the earth, or bythe use of the hands, we call shaking (pallein), or dancing.

HERMOGENES: That is quite true.

SOCRATES: Then that is the explanation of the name Pallas?

HERMOGENES: Yes; but what do you say of the other name?

SOCRATES: Athene?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the moderninterpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of theancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that hemeant by Athene “mind” (nous) and “intelligence”(dianoia), and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion abouther; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, “divineintelligence” (Thou noesis), as though he would say: This is she who hasthe mind of God (Theonoa);—using alpha as a dialectical variety for eta,and taking away iota and sigma (There seems to be some error in the MSS. Themeaning is that the word theonoa = theounoa is a curtailed form of theounoesis, but the omitted letters do not agree.). Perhaps, however, the nameTheonoe may mean “she who knows divine things” (Theia noousa)better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author ofit wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence (en ethei noesin),and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however, either he or hissuccessors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called herAthene.

HERMOGENES: But what do you say of Hephaestus?

SOCRATES: Speak you of the princely lord of light (Phaeos istora)?

HERMOGENES: Surely.

SOCRATES: Ephaistos is Phaistos, and has added the eta by attraction; that isobvious to anybody.

HERMOGENES: That is very probable, until some more probable notion gets intoyour head.

SOCRATES: To prevent that, you had better ask what is the derivation of Ares.

HERMOGENES: What is Ares?

SOCRATES: Ares may be called, if you will, from his manhood (arren) andmanliness, or if you please, from his hard and unchangeable nature, which isthe meaning of arratos: the latter is a derivation in every way appropriate tothe God of war.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And now, by the Gods, let us have no more of the Gods, for I amafraid of them; ask about anything but them, and thou shalt see how the steedsof Euthyphro can prance.

HERMOGENES: Only one more God! I should like to know about Hermes, of whom I amsaid not to be a true son. Let us make him out, and then I shall know whetherthere is any meaning in what Cratylus says.

SOCRATES: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech, andsignifies that he is the interpreter (ermeneus), or messenger, or thief, orliar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do withlanguage; as I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of the use ofspeech, and there is an often-recurring Homeric word emesato, which means“he contrived”—out of these two words, eirein and mesasthai,the legislator formed the name of the God who invented language and speech; andwe may imagine him dictating to us the use of this name: “O myfriends,” says he to us, “seeing that he is the contriver of talesor speeches, you may rightly call him Eirhemes.” And this has beenimproved by us, as we think, into Hermes. Iris also appears to have been calledfrom the verb “to tell” (eirein), because she was a messenger.

HERMOGENES: Then I am very sure that Cratylus was quite right in saying that Iwas no true son of Hermes (Ermogenes), for I am not a good hand at speeches.

SOCRATES: There is also reason, my friend, in Pan being the double-formed sonof Hermes.

HERMOGENES: How do you make that out?

SOCRATES: You are aware that speech signifies all things (pan), and is alwaysturning them round and round, and has two forms, true and false?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Is not the truth that is in him the smooth or sacred form whichdwells above among the Gods, whereas falsehood dwells among men below, and isrough like the goat of tragedy; for tales and falsehoods have generally to dowith the tragic or goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them?

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then surely Pan, who is the declarer of all things (pan) and theperpetual mover (aei polon) of all things, is rightly called aipolos(goat-herd), he being the two-formed son of Hermes, smooth in his upper part,and rough and goatlike in his lower regions. And, as the son of Hermes, he isspeech or the brother of speech, and that brother should be like brother is nomarvel. But, as I was saying, my dear Hermogenes, let us get away from theGods.

HERMOGENES: From these sort of Gods, by all means, Socrates. But why should wenot discuss another kind of Gods—the sun, moon, stars, earth, aether,air, fire, water, the seasons, and the year?

SOCRATES: You impose a great many tasks upon me. Still, if you wish, I will notrefuse.

HERMOGENES: You will oblige me.

SOCRATES: How would you have me begin? Shall I take first of all him whom youmentioned first—the sun?

HERMOGENES: Very good.

SOCRATES: The origin of the sun will probably be clearer in the Doric form, forthe Dorians call him alios, and this name is given to him because when he riseshe gathers (alizoi) men together or because he is always rolling in his course(aei eilein ion) about the earth; or from aiolein, of which the meaning is thesame as poikillein (to variegate), because he variegates the productions of theearth.

HERMOGENES: But what is selene (the moon)?

SOCRATES: That name is rather unfortunate for Anaxagoras.

HERMOGENES: How so?

SOCRATES: The word seems to forestall his recent discovery, that the moonreceives her light from the sun.

HERMOGENES: Why do you say so?

SOCRATES: The two words selas (brightness) and phos (light) have much the samemeaning?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: This light about the moon is always new (neon) and always old (enon),if the disciples of Anaxagoras say truly. For the sun in his revolution alwaysadds new light, and there is the old light of the previous month.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: The moon is not unfrequently called selanaia.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: And as she has a light which is always old and always new (enon neonaei) she may very properly have the name selaenoneoaeia; and this when hammeredinto shape becomes selanaia.

HERMOGENES: A real dithyrambic sort of name that, Socrates. But what do you sayof the month and the stars?

SOCRATES: Meis (month) is called from meiousthai (to lessen), because sufferingdiminution; the name of astra (stars) seems to be derived from astrape, whichis an improvement on anastrope, signifying the upsetting of the eyes(anastrephein opa).

HERMOGENES: What do you say of pur (fire) and udor (water)?

SOCRATES: I am at a loss how to explain pur; either the muse of Euthyphro hasdeserted me, or there is some very great difficulty in the word. Please,however, to note the contrivance which I adopt whenever I am in a difficulty ofthis sort.

HERMOGENES: What is it?

SOCRATES: I will tell you; but I should like to know first whether you can tellme what is the meaning of the pur?

HERMOGENES: Indeed I cannot.

SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I suspect to be the true explanation of thisand several other words?—My belief is that they are of foreign origin.For the Hellenes, especially those who were under the dominion of thebarbarians, often borrowed from them.

HERMOGENES: What is the inference?

SOCRATES: Why, you know that any one who seeks to demonstrate the fitness ofthese names according to the Hellenic language, and not according to thelanguage from which the words are derived, is rather likely to be at fault.

HERMOGENES: Yes, certainly.

SOCRATES: Well then, consider whether this pur is not foreign; for the word isnot easily brought into relation with the Hellenic tongue, and the Phrygiansmay be observed to have the same word slightly changed, just as they have udor(water) and kunes (dogs), and many other words.

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: Any violent interpretations of the words should be avoided; forsomething to say about them may easily be found. And thus I get rid of pur andudor. Aer (air), Hermogenes, may be explained as the element which raises(airei) things from the earth, or as ever flowing (aei rei), or because theflux of the air is wind, and the poets call the winds “air-blasts,”(aetai); he who uses the term may mean, so to speak, air-flux (aetorroun), inthe sense of wind-flux (pneumatorroun); and because this moving wind may beexpressed by either term he employs the word air (aer = aetes rheo). Aither(aether) I should interpret as aeitheer; this may be correctly said, becausethis element is always running in a flux about the air (aei thei peri tou aerareon). The meaning of the word ge (earth) comes out better when in the form ofgaia, for the earth may be truly called “mother” (gaia,genneteira), as in the language of Homer (Od.) gegaasi means gegennesthai.

HERMOGENES: Good.

SOCRATES: What shall we take next?

HERMOGENES: There are orai (the seasons), and the two names of the year,eniautos and etos.

SOCRATES: The orai should be spelt in the old Attic way, if you desire to knowthe probable truth about them; they are rightly called the orai because theydivide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and the fruits of theearth. The words eniautos and etos appear to be the same,—“thatwhich brings to light the plants and growths of the earth in their turn, andpasses them in review within itself (en eauto exetazei)”: this is brokenup into two words, eniautos from en eauto, and etos from etazei, just as theoriginal name of Zeus was divided into Zena and Dia; and the whole propositionmeans that his power of reviewing from within is one, but has two names, twowords etos and eniautos being thus formed out of a single proposition.

HERMOGENES: Indeed, Socrates, you make surprising progress.

SOCRATES: I am run away with.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: But am not yet at my utmost speed.

HERMOGENES: I should like very much to know, in the next place, how you wouldexplain the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in those charmingwords—wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest of them?

SOCRATES: That is a tremendous class of names which you are disinterring;still, as I have put on the lion’s skin, I must not be faint of heart;and I suppose that I must consider the meaning of wisdom (phronesis) andunderstanding (sunesis), and judgment (gnome), and knowledge (episteme), andall those other charming words, as you call them?

HERMOGENES: Surely, we must not leave off until we find out their meaning.

SOCRATES: By the dog of Egypt I have a not bad notion which came into my headonly this moment: I believe that the primeval givers of names were undoubtedlylike too many of our modern philosophers, who, in their search after the natureof things, are always getting dizzy from constantly going round and round, andthen they imagine that the world is going round and round and moving in alldirections; and this appearance, which arises out of their own internalcondition, they suppose to be a reality of nature; they think that there isnothing stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that the world isalways full of every sort of motion and change. The consideration of the nameswhich I mentioned has led me into making this reflection.

HERMOGENES: How is that, Socrates?

SOCRATES: Perhaps you did not observe that in the names which have been justcited, the motion or flux or generation of things is most surely indicated.

HERMOGENES: No, indeed, I never thought of it.

SOCRATES: Take the first of those which you mentioned; clearly that is a nameindicative of motion.

HERMOGENES: What was the name?

SOCRATES: Phronesis (wisdom), which may signify phoras kai rhou noesis(perception of motion and flux), or perhaps phoras onesis (the blessing ofmotion), but is at any rate connected with pheresthai (motion); gnome(judgment), again, certainly implies the ponderation or consideration (nomesis)of generation, for to ponder is the same as to consider; or, if you wouldrather, here is noesis, the very word just now mentioned, which is neou esis(the desire of the new); the word neos implies that the world is always inprocess of creation. The giver of the name wanted to express this longing ofthe soul, for the original name was neoesis, and not noesis; but eta took theplace of a double epsilon. The word sophrosune is the salvation (soteria) ofthat wisdom (phronesis) which we were just now considering. Epioteme(knowledge) is akin to this, and indicates that the soul which is good foranything follows (epetai) the motion of things, neither anticipating them norfalling behind them; wherefore the word should rather be read as epistemene,inserting epsilon nu. Sunesis (understanding) may be regarded in like manner asa kind of conclusion; the word is derived from sunienai (to go along with),and, like epistasthai (to know), implies the progression of the soul in companywith the nature of things. Sophia (wisdom) is very dark, and appears not to beof native growth; the meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things. Youmust remember that the poets, when they speak of the commencement of any rapidmotion, often use the word esuthe (he rushed); and there was a famousLacedaemonian who was named Sous (Rush), for by this word the Lacedaemonianssignify rapid motion, and the touching (epaphe) of motion is expressed bysophia, for all things are supposed to be in motion. Good (agathon) is the namewhich is given to the admirable (agasto) in nature; for, although all thingsmove, still there are degrees of motion; some are swifter, some slower; butthere are some things which are admirable for their swiftness, and thisadmirable part of nature is called agathon. Dikaiosune (justice) is clearlydikaiou sunesis (understanding of the just); but the actual word dikaion ismore difficult: men are only agreed to a certain extent about justice, and thenthey begin to disagree. For those who suppose all things to be in motionconceive the greater part of nature to be a mere receptacle; and they say thatthere is a penetrating power which passes through all this, and is theinstrument of creation in all, and is the subtlest and swiftest element; for ifit were not the subtlest, and a power which none can keep out, and also theswiftest, passing by other things as if they were standing still, it could notpenetrate through the moving universe. And this element, which superintends allthings and pierces (diaion) all, is rightly called dikaion; the letter k isonly added for the sake of euphony. Thus far, as I was saying, there is ageneral agreement about the nature of justice; but I, Hermogenes, being anenthusiastic disciple, have been told in a mystery that the justice of which Iam speaking is also the cause of the world: now a cause is that because ofwhich anything is created; and some one comes and whispers in my ear thatjustice is rightly so called because partaking of the nature of the cause, andI begin, after hearing what he has said, to interrogate him gently:“Well, my excellent friend,” say I, “but if all this be true,I still want to know what is justice.” Thereupon they think that I asktiresome questions, and am leaping over the barriers, and have been alreadysufficiently answered, and they try to satisfy me with one derivation afteranother, and at length they quarrel. For one of them says that justice is thesun, and that he only is the piercing (diaionta) and burning (kaonta) elementwhich is the guardian of nature. And when I joyfully repeat this beautifulnotion, I am answered by the satirical remark, “What, is there no justicein the world when the sun is down?” And when I earnestly beg myquestioner to tell me his own honest opinion, he says, “Fire in theabstract”; but this is not very intelligible. Another says, “No,not fire in the abstract, but the abstraction of heat in the fire.”Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says, as Anaxagoras says, thatjustice is mind, for mind, as they say, has absolute power, and mixes withnothing, and orders all things, and passes through all things. At last, myfriend, I find myself in far greater perplexity about the nature of justicethan I was before I began to learn. But still I am of opinion that the name,which has led me into this digression, was given to justice for the reasonswhich I have mentioned.

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are not improvising now; you must haveheard this from some one else.

SOCRATES: And not the rest?

HERMOGENES: Hardly.

SOCRATES: Well, then, let me go on in the hope of making you believe in theoriginality of the rest. What remains after justice? I do not think that wehave as yet discussed courage (andreia),—injustice (adikia), which isobviously nothing more than a hindrance to the penetrating principle(diaiontos), need not be considered. Well, then, the name of andreia seems toimply a battle;—this battle is in the world of existence, and accordingto the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux (enantia rhon): if you extractthe delta from andreia, the name at once signifies the thing, and you mayclearly understand that andreia is not the stream opposed to every stream, butonly to that which is contrary to justice, for otherwise courage would not havebeen praised. The words arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similarallusion to the same principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) Isuspect to be the same word as goun (birth): thelu (female) appears to bepartly derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makesthings flourish (tethelenai).

HERMOGENES: That is surely probable.

SOCRATES: Yes; and the very word thallein (to flourish) seems to figure thegrowth of youth, which is swift and sudden ever. And this is expressed by thelegislator in the name, which is a compound of thein (running), and allesthai(leaping). Pray observe how I gallop away when I get on smooth ground. Thereare a good many names generally thought to be of importance, which have stillto be explained.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: There is the meaning of the word techne (art), for example.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: That may be identified with echonoe, and expresses the possession ofmind: you have only to take away the tau and insert two omichrons, one betweenthe chi and nu, and another between the nu and eta.

HERMOGENES: That is a very shabby etymology.

SOCRATES: Yes, my dear friend; but then you know that the original names havebeen long ago buried and disguised by people sticking on and stripping offletters for the sake of euphony, and twisting and bedizening them in all sortsof ways: and time too may have had a share in the change. Take, for example,the word katoptron; why is the letter rho inserted? This must surely be theaddition of some one who cares nothing about the truth, but thinks only ofputting the mouth into shape. And the additions are often such that at last nohuman being can possibly make out the original meaning of the word. Anotherexample is the word sphigx, sphiggos, which ought properly to be phigx,phiggos, and there are other examples.

HERMOGENES: That is quite true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And yet, if you are permitted to put in and pull out any letterswhich you please, names will be too easily made, and any name may be adapted toany object.

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: Yes, that is true. And therefore a wise dictator, like yourself,should observe the laws of moderation and probability.

HERMOGENES: Such is my desire.

SOCRATES: And mine, too, Hermogenes. But do not be too much of a precisian, or“you will unnerve me of my strength (Iliad.).” When you haveallowed me to add mechane (contrivance) to techne (art) I shall be at the topof my bent, for I conceive mechane to be a sign of greataccomplishment—anein; for mekos has the meaning of greatness, and thesetwo, mekos and anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying, being nowat the top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning of the two wordsarete (virtue) and kakia (vice); arete I do not as yet understand, but kakia istransparent, and agrees with the principles which preceded, for all thingsbeing in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos ion (going badly); and this evilmotion when existing in the soul has the general name of kakia, or vice,specially appropriated to it. The meaning of kakos ienai may be furtherillustrated by the use of deilia (cowardice), which ought to have come afterandreia, but was forgotten, and, as I fear, is not the only word which has beenpassed over. Deilia signifies that the soul is bound with a strong chain(desmos), for lian means strength, and therefore deilia expresses the greatestand strongest bond of the soul; and aporia (difficulty) is an evil of the samenature (from a (alpha) not, and poreuesthai to go), like anything else which isan impediment to motion and movement. Then the word kakia appears to mean kakosienai, or going badly, or limping and halting; of which the consequence is,that the soul becomes filled with vice. And if kakia is the name of this sortof thing, arete will be the opposite of it, signifying in the first place easeof motion, then that the stream of the good soul is unimpeded, and hastherefore the attribute of ever flowing without let or hindrance, and istherefore called arete, or, more correctly, aeireite (ever-flowing), and mayperhaps have had another form, airete (eligible), indicating that nothing ismore eligible than virtue, and this has been hammered into arete. I daresaythat you will deem this to be another invention of mine, but I think that ifthe previous word kakia was right, then arete is also right.

HERMOGENES: But what is the meaning of kakon, which has played so great a partin your previous discourse?

SOCRATES: That is a very singular word about which I can hardly form anopinion, and therefore I must have recourse to my ingenious device.

HERMOGENES: What device?

SOCRATES: The device of a foreign origin, which I shall give to this word also.

HERMOGENES: Very likely you are right; but suppose that we leave these wordsand endeavour to see the rationale of kalon and aischron.

SOCRATES: The meaning of aischron is evident, being only aei ischon roes(always preventing from flowing), and this is in accordance with our formerderivations. For the name-giver was a great enemy to stagnation of all sorts,and hence he gave the name aeischoroun to that which hindered the flux (aeiischon roun), and that is now beaten together into aischron.

HERMOGENES: But what do you say of kalon?

SOCRATES: That is more obscure; yet the form is only due to the quantity, andhas been changed by altering omicron upsilon into omicron.

HERMOGENES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: This name appears to denote mind.

HERMOGENES: How so?

SOCRATES: Let me ask you what is the cause why anything has a name; is not theprinciple which imposes the name the cause?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And must not this be the mind of Gods, or of men, or of both?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Is not mind that which called (kalesan) things by their names, and isnot mind the beautiful (kalon)?

HERMOGENES: That is evident.

SOCRATES: And are not the works of intelligence and mind worthy of praise, andare not other works worthy of blame?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Physic does the work of a physician, and carpentering does the worksof a carpenter?

HERMOGENES: Exactly.

SOCRATES: And the principle of beauty does the works of beauty?

HERMOGENES: Of course.

SOCRATES: And that principle we affirm to be mind?

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: Then mind is rightly called beauty because she does the works whichwe recognize and speak of as the beautiful?

HERMOGENES: That is evident.

SOCRATES: What more names remain to us?

HERMOGENES: There are the words which are connected with agathon and kalon,such as sumpheron and lusiteloun, ophelimon, kerdaleon, and their opposites.

SOCRATES: The meaning of sumpheron (expedient) I think that you may discoverfor yourself by the light of the previous examples,—for it is a sisterword to episteme, meaning just the motion (pora) of the soul accompanying theworld, and things which are done upon this principle are called sumphora orsumpheronta, because they are carried round with the world.

HERMOGENES: That is probable.

SOCRATES: Again, cherdaleon (gainful) is called from cherdos (gain), but youmust alter the delta into nu if you want to get at the meaning; for this wordalso signifies good, but in another way; he who gave the name intended toexpress the power of admixture (kerannumenon) and universal penetration in thegood; in forming the word, however, he inserted a delta instead of a nu, and somade kerdos.

HERMOGENES: Well, but what is lusiteloun (profitable)?

SOCRATES: I suppose, Hermogenes, that people do not mean by the profitable thegainful or that which pays (luei) the retailer, but they use the word in thesense of swift. You regard the profitable (lusiteloun), as that which being theswiftest thing in existence, allows of no stay in things and no pause or end ofmotion, but always, if there begins to be any end, lets things go again (luei),and makes motion immortal and unceasing: and in this point of view, as appearsto me, the good is happily denominated lusiteloun—being that which looses(luon) the end (telos) of motion. Ophelimon (the advantageous) is derived fromophellein, meaning that which creates and increases; this latter is a commonHomeric word, and has a foreign character.

HERMOGENES: And what do you say of their opposites?

SOCRATES: Of such as are mere negatives I hardly think that I need speak.

HERMOGENES: Which are they?

SOCRATES: The words axumphoron (inexpedient), anopheles (unprofitable),alusiteles (unadvantageous), akerdes (ungainful).

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: I would rather take the words blaberon (harmful), zemiodes (hurtful).

HERMOGENES: Good.

SOCRATES: The word blaberon is that which is said to hinder or harm (blaptein)the stream (roun); blapton is boulomenon aptein (seeking to hold or bind); foraptein is the same as dein, and dein is always a term of censure; boulomenonaptein roun (wanting to bind the stream) would properly be boulapteroun, andthis, as I imagine, is improved into blaberon.

HERMOGENES: You bring out curious results, Socrates, in the use of names; andwhen I hear the word boulapteroun I cannot help imagining that you are makingyour mouth into a flute, and puffing away at some prelude to Athene.

SOCRATES: That is the fault of the makers of the name, Hermogenes; not mine.

HERMOGENES: Very true; but what is the derivation of zemiodes?

SOCRATES: What is the meaning of zemiodes?—let me remark, Hermogenes, howright I was in saying that great changes are made in the meaning of words byputting in and pulling out letters; even a very slight permutation willsometimes give an entirely opposite sense; I may instance the word deon, whichoccurs to me at the moment, and reminds me of what I was going to say to you,that the fine fashionable language of modern times has twisted and disguisedand entirely altered the original meaning both of deon, and also of zemiodes,which in the old language is clearly indicated.

HERMOGENES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I will try to explain. You are aware that our forefathers loved thesounds iota and delta, especially the women, who are most conservative of theancient language, but now they change iota into eta or epsilon, and delta intozeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.

HERMOGENES: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: For example, in very ancient times they called the day either imeraor emera (short e), which is called by us emera (long e).

HERMOGENES: That is true.

SOCRATES: Do you observe that only the ancient form shows the intention of thegiver of the name? of which the reason is, that men long for (imeirousi) andlove the light which comes after the darkness, and is therefore called imera,from imeros, desire.

HERMOGENES: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But now the name is so travestied that you cannot tell the meaning,although there are some who imagine the day to be called emera because it makesthings gentle (emera different accents).

HERMOGENES: Such is my view.

SOCRATES: And do you know that the ancients said duogon and not zugon?

HERMOGENES: They did so.

SOCRATES: And zugon (yoke) has no meaning,—it ought to be duogon, whichword expresses the binding of two together (duein agoge) for the purpose ofdrawing;—this has been changed into zugon, and there are many otherexamples of similar changes.

HERMOGENES: There are.

SOCRATES: Proceeding in the same train of thought I may remark that the worddeon (obligation) has a meaning which is the opposite of all the otherappellations of good; for deon is here a species of good, and is, nevertheless,the chain (desmos) or hinderer of motion, and therefore own brother ofblaberon.

HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates; that is quite plain.

SOCRATES: Not if you restore the ancient form, which is more likely to be thecorrect one, and read dion instead of deon; if you convert the epsilon into aniota after the old fashion, this word will then agree with other words meaninggood; for dion, not deon, signifies the good, and is a term of praise; and theauthor of names has not contradicted himself, but in all these variousappellations, deon (obligatory), ophelimon (advantageous), lusiteloun(profitable), kerdaleon (gainful), agathon (good), sumpheron (expedient),euporon (plenteous), the same conception is implied of the ordering orall-pervading principle which is praised, and the restraining and bindingprinciple which is censured. And this is further illustrated by the wordzemiodes (hurtful), which if the zeta is only changed into delta as in theancient language, becomes demiodes; and this name, as you will perceive, isgiven to that which binds motion (dounti ion).

HERMOGENES: What do you say of edone (pleasure), lupe (pain), epithumia(desire), and the like, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I do not think, Hermogenes, that there is any great difficulty aboutthem—edone is e (eta) onesis, the action which tends to advantage; andthe original form may be supposed to have been eone, but this has been alteredby the insertion of the delta. Lupe appears to be derived from the relaxation(luein) which the body feels when in sorrow; ania (trouble) is the hindrance ofmotion (alpha and ienai); algedon (distress), if I am not mistaken, is aforeign word, which is derived from aleinos (grievous); odune (grief) is calledfrom the putting on (endusis) sorrow; in achthedon (vexation) “the wordtoo labours,” as any one may see; chara (joy) is the very expression ofthe fluency and diffusion of the soul (cheo); terpsis (delight) is so calledfrom the pleasure creeping (erpon) through the soul, which may be likened to abreath (pnoe) and is properly erpnoun, but has been altered by time intoterpnon; eupherosune (cheerfulness) and epithumia explain themselves; theformer, which ought to be eupherosune and has been changed euphrosune, isnamed, as every one may see, from the soul moving (pheresthai) in harmony withnature; epithumia is really e epi ton thumon iousa dunamis, the power whichenters into the soul; thumos (passion) is called from the rushing (thuseos) andboiling of the soul; imeros (desire) denotes the stream (rous) which most drawsthe soul dia ten esin tes roes—because flowing with desire (iemenos), andexpresses a longing after things and violent attraction of the soul to them,and is termed imeros from possessing this power; pothos (longing) is expressiveof the desire of that which is not present but absent, and in another place(pou); this is the reason why the name pothos is applied to things absent, asimeros is to things present; eros (love) is so called because flowing in(esron) from without; the stream is not inherent, but is an influenceintroduced through the eyes, and from flowing in was called esros (influx) inthe old time when they used omicron for omega, and is called eros, now thatomega is substituted for omicron. But why do you not give me another word?

HERMOGENES: What do you think of doxa (opinion), and that class of words?

SOCRATES: Doxa is either derived from dioxis (pursuit), and expresses the marchof the soul in the pursuit of knowledge, or from the shooting of a bow (toxon);the latter is more likely, and is confirmed by oiesis (thinking), which is onlyoisis (moving), and implies the movement of the soul to the essential nature ofeach thing—just as boule (counsel) has to do with shooting (bole); andboulesthai (to wish) combines the notion of aiming and deliberating—allthese words seem to follow doxa, and all involve the idea of shooting, just asaboulia, absence of counsel, on the other hand, is a mishap, or missing, ormistaking of the mark, or aim, or proposal, or object.

HERMOGENES: You are quickening your pace now, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Why yes, the end I now dedicate to God, not, however, until I haveexplained anagke (necessity), which ought to come next, and ekousion (thevoluntary). Ekousion is certainly the yielding (eikon) andunresisting—the notion implied is yielding and not opposing, yielding, asI was just now saying, to that motion which is in accordance with our will; butthe necessary and resistant being contrary to our will, implies error andignorance; the idea is taken from walking through a ravine which is impassable,and rugged, and overgrown, and impedes motion—and this is the derivationof the word anagkaion (necessary) an agke ion, going through a ravine. Butwhile my strength lasts let us persevere, and I hope that you will perseverewith your questions.

HERMOGENES: Well, then, let me ask about the greatest and noblest, such asaletheia (truth) and pseudos (falsehood) and on (being), not forgetting toenquire why the word onoma (name), which is the theme of our discussion, hasthis name of onoma.

SOCRATES: You know the word maiesthai (to seek)?

HERMOGENES: Yes;—meaning the same as zetein (to enquire).

SOCRATES: The word onoma seems to be a compressed sentence, signifying on ouzetema (being for which there is a search); as is still more obvious inonomaston (notable), which states in so many words that real existence is thatfor which there is a seeking (on ou masma); aletheia is also an agglomerationof theia ale (divine wandering), implying the divine motion of existence;pseudos (falsehood) is the opposite of motion; here is another ill name givenby the legislator to stagnation and forced inaction, which he compares to sleep(eudein); but the original meaning of the word is disguised by the addition ofpsi; on and ousia are ion with an iota broken off; this agrees with the trueprinciple, for being (on) is also moving (ion), and the same may be said of notbeing, which is likewise called not going (oukion or ouki on = ouk ion).

HERMOGENES: You have hammered away at them manfully; but suppose that some onewere to say to you, what is the word ion, and what are reon anddoun?—show me their fitness.

SOCRATES: You mean to say, how should I answer him?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: One way of giving the appearance of an answer has been alreadysuggested.

HERMOGENES: What way?

SOCRATES: To say that names which we do not understand are of foreign origin;and this is very likely the right answer, and something of this kind may betrue of them; but also the original forms of words may have been lost in thelapse of ages; names have been so twisted in all manner of ways, that I shouldnot be surprised if the old language when compared with that now in use wouldappear to us to be a barbarous tongue.

HERMOGENES: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Yes, very likely. But still the enquiry demands our earnest attentionand we must not flinch. For we should remember, that if a person go onanalysing names into words, and enquiring also into the elements out of whichthe words are formed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has toanswer him must at last give up the enquiry in despair.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And at what point ought he to lose heart and give up the enquiry?Must he not stop when he comes to the names which are the elements of all othernames and sentences; for these cannot be supposed to be made up of other names?The word agathon (good), for example, is, as we were saying, a compound ofagastos (admirable) and thoos (swift). And probably thoos is made up of otherelements, and these again of others. But if we take a word which is incapableof further resolution, then we shall be right in saying that we have at lastreached a primary element, which need not be resolved any further.

HERMOGENES: I believe you to be in the right.

SOCRATES: And suppose the names about which you are now asking should turn outto be primary elements, must not their truth or law be examined according tosome new method?

HERMOGENES: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Quite so, Hermogenes; all that has preceded would lead to thisconclusion. And if, as I think, the conclusion is true, then I shall again sayto you, come and help me, that I may not fall into some absurdity in statingthe principle of primary names.

HERMOGENES: Let me hear, and I will do my best to assist you.

SOCRATES: I think that you will acknowledge with me, that one principle isapplicable to all names, primary as well as secondary—when they areregarded simply as names, there is no difference in them.

HERMOGENES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: All the names that we have been explaining were intended to indicatethe nature of things.

HERMOGENES: Of course.

SOCRATES: And that this is true of the primary quite as much as of thesecondary names, is implied in their being names.

HERMOGENES: Surely.

SOCRATES: But the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from theprimary.

HERMOGENES: That is evident.

SOCRATES: Very good; but then how do the primary names which precede analysisshow the natures of things, as far as they can be shown; which they must do, ifthey are to be real names? And here I will ask you a question: Suppose that wehad no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one another, should wenot, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest ofthe body?

HERMOGENES: There would be no choice, Socrates.

SOCRATES: We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of our handsto heaven would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness wouldbe expressed by letting them drop to the ground; if we were describing therunning of a horse, or any other animal, we should make our bodies and theirgestures as like as we could to them.

HERMOGENES: I do not see that we could do anything else.

SOCRATES: We could not; for by bodily imitation only can the body ever expressanything.

HERMOGENES: Very true.

SOCRATES: And when we want to express ourselves, either with the voice, ortongue, or mouth, the expression is simply their imitation of that which wewant to express.

HERMOGENES: It must be so, I think.

SOCRATES: Then a name is a vocal imitation of that which the vocal imitatornames or imitates?

HERMOGENES: I think so.

SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, I am disposed to think that we have not reached thetruth as yet.

HERMOGENES: Why not?

SOCRATES: Because if we have we shall be obliged to admit that the people whoimitate sheep, or cocks, or other animals, name that which they imitate.

HERMOGENES: Quite true.

SOCRATES: Then could I have been right in what I was saying?

HERMOGENES: In my opinion, no. But I wish that you would tell me, Socrates,what sort of an imitation is a name?

SOCRATES: In the first place, I should reply, not a musical imitation, althoughthat is also vocal; nor, again, an imitation of what music imitates; these, inmy judgment, would not be naming. Let me put the matter as follows: All objectshave sound and figure, and many have colour?

HERMOGENES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But the art of naming appears not to be concerned with imitations ofthis kind; the arts which have to do with them are music and drawing?

HERMOGENES: True.

SOCRATES: Again, is there not an essence of each thing, just as there is acolour, or sound? And is there not an essence of colour and sound as well as ofanything else which may be said to have an essence?

HERMOGENES: I should think so.

SOCRATES: Well, and if any one could express the essence of each thing inletters and syllables, would he not express the nature of each thing?

HERMOGENES: Quite so.

SOCRATES: The musician and the painter were the two names which you gave to thetwo other imitators. What will this imitator be called?

HERMOGENES: I imagine, Socrates, that he must be the namer, or name-giver, ofwhom we are in search.

SOCRATES: If this is true, then I think that we are in a condition to considerthe names ron (stream), ienai (to go), schesis (retention), about which youwere asking; and we may see whether the namer has grasped the nature of them inletters and syllables in such a manner as to imitate the essence or not.

HERMOGENES: Very good.

SOCRATES: But are these the only primary names, or are there others?

HERMOGENES: There must be others.

SOCRATES: So I should expect. But how shall we further analyse them, and wheredoes the imitator begin? Imitation of the essence is made by syllables andletters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the letters, just as thosewho are beginning rhythm first distinguish the powers of elementary, and thenof compound sounds, and when they have done so, but not before, they proceed tothe consideration of rhythms?

HERMOGENES: Yes.

SOCRATES: Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first separating thevowels, and then the consonants and mutes (letters which are neither vowels norsemivowels), into classes, according to the received distinctions of thelearned; also the semivowels, which are neither vowels, nor yet mutes; anddistinguishing into classes the vowels themselves? And when we have perfectedthe classification of things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as inthe case of letters, there are any classes to which they may be all referred(cf. Phaedrus); and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whetherthey have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have wellconsidered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what theyresemble—whether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether thereis to be an admixture of several of them; just, as in painting, the painter whowants to depict anything sometimes uses purple only, or any other colour, andsometimes mixes up several colours, as his method is when he has to paint fleshcolour or anything of that kind—he uses his colours as his figures appearto require them; and so, too, we shall apply letters to the expression ofobjects, either single letters when required, or several letters; and so weshall form syllables, as they are called, and from syllables make nouns andverbs; and thus, at last, from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive atlanguage, large and fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even soshall we make speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by someother art. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carriedaway—meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) theancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to pieces inlike manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the whole subject, and wemust see whether the primary, and also whether the secondary elements arerightly given or not, for if they are not, the composition of them, my dearHermogenes, will be a sorry piece of work, and in the wrong direction.

HERMOGENES: That, Socrates, I can quite believe.

SOCRATES: Well, but do you suppose that you will be able to analyse them inthis way? for I am certain that I should not.

HERMOGENES: Much less am I likely to be able.

SOCRATES: Shall we leave them, then? or shall we seek to discover, if we can,something about them, according to the measure of our ability, saying by way ofpreface, as I said before of the Gods, that of the truth about them we knownothing, and do but entertain human notions of them. And in this presentenquiry, let us say to ourselves, before we proceed, that the higher method isthe one which we or others who would analyse language to any good purpose mustfollow; but under the circumstances, as men say, we must do as well as we can.What do you think?

HERMOGENES: I very much approve.

SOCRATES: That objects should be imitated in letters and syllables, and so findexpression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot beavoided—there is no better principle to which we can look for the truthof first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, likethe tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their gods waiting in the air; andmust get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that “the Godsgave the first names, and therefore they are right.” This will be thebest contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, ofderiving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than weare; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the samesort of excuse as the last; for all these are not reasons but only ingeniousexcuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And yet any sortof ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance of secondarywords; for they can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then theprofessor of languages should be able to give a very lucid explanation of firstnames, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest. Do younot suppose this to be true?

HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates.

SOCRATES: My first notions of original names are truly wild and ridiculous,though I have no objection to impart them to you if you desire, and I hope thatyou will communicate to me in return anything better which you may have.

HERMOGENES: Fear not; I will do my best.

SOCRATES: In the first place, the letter rho appears to me to be the generalinstrument expressing all motion (kinesis). But I have not yet explained themeaning of this latter word, which is just iesis (going); for the letter etawas not in use among the ancients, who only employed epsilon; and the root iskiein, which is a foreign form, the same as ienai. And the old word kinesiswill be correctly given as iesis in corresponding modern letters. Assuming thisforeign root kiein, and allowing for the change of the eta and the insertion ofthe nu, we have kinesis, which should have been kieinsis or eisis; and stasisis the negative of ienai (or eisis), and has been improved into stasis. Now theletter rho, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an excellentinstrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter forthis purpose: for example, in the actual words rein and roe he representsmotion by rho; also in the words tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged); andagain, in words such as krouein (strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise),thruptein (break), kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sortsof movements he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as Iimagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest inthe pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to expressmotion, just as by the letter iota he expresses the subtle elements which passthrough all things. This is why he uses the letter iota as imitative of motion,ienai, iesthai. And there is another class of letters, phi, psi, sigma, and xi,of which the pronunciation is accompanied by great expenditure of breath; theseare used in the imitation of such notions as psuchron (shivering), xeon(seething), seiesthai, (to be shaken), seismos (shock), and are alwaysintroduced by the giver of names when he wants to imitate what is phusodes(windy). He seems to have thought that the closing and pressure of the tonguein the utterance of delta and tau was expressive of binding and rest in aplace: he further observed the liquid movement of lambda, in the pronunciationof which the tongue slips, and in this he found the expression of smoothness,as in leios (level), and in the word oliothanein (to slip) itself, liparon(sleek), in the word kollodes (gluey), and the like: the heavier sound of gammadetained the slipping tongue, and the union of the two gave the notion of aglutinous clammy nature, as in glischros, glukus, gloiodes. The nu he observedto be sounded from within, and therefore to have a notion of inwardness; hencehe introduced the sound in endos and entos: alpha he assigned to the expressionof size, and nu of length, because they are great letters: omicron was the signof roundness, and therefore there is plenty of omicron mixed up in the wordgoggulon (round). Thus did the legislator, reducing all things into letters andsyllables, and impressing on them names and signs, and out of them by imitationcompounding other signs. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the truth of names;but I should like to hear what Cratylus has more to say.

HERMOGENES: But, Socrates, as I was telling you before, Cratylus mystifies me;he says that there is a fitness of names, but he never explains what is thisfitness, so that I cannot tell whether his obscurity is intended or not. Tellme now, Cratylus, here in the presence of Socrates, do you agree in whatSocrates has been saying about names, or have you something better of your own?and if you have, tell me what your view is, and then you will either learn ofSocrates, or Socrates and I will learn of you.

CRATYLUS: Well, but surely, Hermogenes, you do not suppose that you can learn,or I explain, any subject of importance all in a moment; at any rate, not sucha subject as language, which is, perhaps, the very greatest of all.

HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but, as Hesiod says, and I agree with him, “toadd little to little” is worth while. And, therefore, if you think thatyou can add anything at all, however small, to our knowledge, take a littletrouble and oblige Socrates, and me too, who certainly have a claim upon you.

SOCRATES: I am by no means positive, Cratylus, in the view which Hermogenes andmyself have worked out; and therefore do not hesitate to say what you think,which if it be better than my own view I shall gladly accept. And I should notbe at all surprized to find that you have found some better notion. For youhave evidently reflected on these matters and have had teachers, and if youhave really a better theory of the truth of names, you may count me in thenumber of your disciples.

CRATYLUS: You are right, Socrates, in saying that I have made a study of thesematters, and I might possibly convert you into a disciple. But I fear that theopposite is more probable, and I already find myself moved to say to you whatAchilles in the “Prayers” says to Ajax,—

“Illustrious Ajax, son of Telamon, lord of the people, You appear to havespoken in all things much to my mind.”

And you, Socrates, appear to me to be an oracle, and to give answers much to mymind, whether you are inspired by Euthyphro, or whether some Muse may have longbeen an inhabitant of your breast, unconsciously to yourself.

SOCRATES: Excellent Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; Icannot trust myself. And I think that I ought to stop and ask myself What am Isaying? for there is nothing worse than self-deception—when the deceiveris always at home and always with you—it is quite terrible, and thereforeI ought often to retrace my steps and endeavour to “look fore andaft,” in the words of the aforesaid Homer. And now let me see; where arewe? Have we not been saying that the correct name indicates the nature of thething:—has this proposition been sufficiently proven?

CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, what you say, as I am disposed to think, is quitetrue.

SOCRATES: Names, then, are given in order to instruct?

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And naming is an art, and has artificers?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And who are they?

CRATYLUS: The legislators, of whom you spoke at first.

SOCRATES: And does this art grow up among men like other arts? Let me explainwhat I mean: of painters, some are better and some worse?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: The better painters execute their works, I mean their figures,better, and the worse execute them worse; and of builders also, the better sortbuild fairer houses, and the worse build them worse.

CRATYLUS: True.

SOCRATES: And among legislators, there are some who do their work better andsome worse?

CRATYLUS: No; there I do not agree with you.

SOCRATES: Then you do not think that some laws are better and others worse?

CRATYLUS: No, indeed.

SOCRATES: Or that one name is better than another?

CRATYLUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then all names are rightly imposed?

CRATYLUS: Yes, if they are names at all.

SOCRATES: Well, what do you say to the name of our friend Hermogenes, which wasmentioned before:—assuming that he has nothing of the nature of Hermes inhim, shall we say that this is a wrong name, or not his name at all?

CRATYLUS: I should reply that Hermogenes is not his name at all, but onlyappears to be his, and is really the name of somebody else, who has the naturewhich corresponds to it.

SOCRATES: And if a man were to call him Hermogenes, would he not be evenspeaking falsely? For there may be a doubt whether you can call him Hermogenes,if he is not.

CRATYLUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Are you maintaining that falsehood is impossible? For if this is yourmeaning I should answer, that there have been plenty of liars in all ages.

CRATYLUS: Why, Socrates, how can a man say that which is not?—saysomething and yet say nothing? For is not falsehood saying the thing which isnot?

SOCRATES: Your argument, friend, is too subtle for a man of my age. But Ishould like to know whether you are one of those philosophers who think thatfalsehood may be spoken but not said?

CRATYLUS: Neither spoken nor said.

SOCRATES: Nor uttered nor addressed? For example: If a person, saluting you ina foreign country, were to take your hand and say: “Hail, Athenianstranger, Hermogenes, son of Smicrion”—these words, whether spoken,said, uttered, or addressed, would have no application to you but only to ourfriend Hermogenes, or perhaps to nobody at all?

CRATYLUS: In my opinion, Socrates, the speaker would only be talking nonsense.

SOCRATES: Well, but that will be quite enough for me, if you will tell mewhether the nonsense would be true or false, or partly true and partlyfalse:—which is all that I want to know.

CRATYLUS: I should say that he would be putting himself in motion to nopurpose; and that his words would be an unmeaning sound like the noise ofhammering at a brazen pot.

SOCRATES: But let us see, Cratylus, whether we cannot find a meeting-point, foryou would admit that the name is not the same with the thing named?

CRATYLUS: I should.

SOCRATES: And would you further acknowledge that the name is an imitation ofthe thing?

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And you would say that pictures are also imitations of things, but inanother way?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: I believe you may be right, but I do not rightly understand you.Please to say, then, whether both sorts of imitation (I mean both pictures orwords) are not equally attributable and applicable to the things of which theyare the imitation.

CRATYLUS: They are.

SOCRATES: First look at the matter thus: you may attribute the likeness of theman to the man, and of the woman to the woman; and so on?

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And conversely you may attribute the likeness of the man to thewoman, and of the woman to the man?

CRATYLUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And are both modes of assigning them right, or only the first?

CRATYLUS: Only the first.

SOCRATES: That is to say, the mode of assignment which attributes to each thatwhich belongs to them and is like them?

CRATYLUS: That is my view.

SOCRATES: Now then, as I am desirous that we being friends should have a goodunderstanding about the argument, let me state my view to you: the first modeof assignment, whether applied to figures or to names, I call right, and whenapplied to names only, true as well as right; and the other mode of giving andassigning the name which is unlike, I call wrong, and in the case of names,false as well as wrong.

CRATYLUS: That may be true, Socrates, in the case of pictures; they may bewrongly assigned; but not in the case of names—they must be always right.

SOCRATES: Why, what is the difference? May I not go to a man and say to him,“This is your picture,” showing him his own likeness, or perhapsthe likeness of a woman; and when I say “show,” I mean bring beforethe sense of sight.

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And may I not go to him again, and say, “This is yourname”?—for the name, like the picture, is an imitation. May I notsay to him—“This is your name”? and may I not then bring tohis sense of hearing the imitation of himself, when I say, “This is aman”; or of a female of the human species, when I say, “This is awoman,” as the case may be? Is not all that quite possible?

CRATYLUS: I would fain agree with you, Socrates; and therefore I say, Granted.

SOCRATES: That is very good of you, if I am right, which need hardly bedisputed at present. But if I can assign names as well as pictures to objects,the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment ofthem falsehood. Now if there be such a wrong assignment of names, there mayalso be a wrong or inappropriate assignment of verbs; and if of names and verbsthen of the sentences, which are made up of them. What do you say, Cratylus?

CRATYLUS: I agree; and think that what you say is very true.

SOCRATES: And further, primitive nouns may be compared to pictures, and inpictures you may either give all the appropriate colours and figures, or youmay not give them all—some may be wanting; or there may be too many ortoo much of them—may there not?

CRATYLUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And he who gives all gives a perfect picture or figure; and he whotakes away or adds also gives a picture or figure, but not a good one.

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: In like manner, he who by syllables and letters imitates the natureof things, if he gives all that is appropriate will produce a good image, or inother words a name; but if he subtracts or perhaps adds a little, he will makean image but not a good one; whence I infer that some names are well and othersill made.

CRATYLUS: That is true.

SOCRATES: Then the artist of names may be sometimes good, or he may be bad?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And this artist of names is called the legislator?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Then like other artists the legislator may be good or he may be bad;it must surely be so if our former admissions hold good?

CRATYLUS: Very true, Socrates; but the case of language, you see, is different;for when by the help of grammar we assign the letters alpha or beta, or anyother letters to a certain name, then, if we add, or subtract, or misplace aletter, the name which is written is not only written wrongly, but not writtenat all; and in any of these cases becomes other than a name.

SOCRATES: But I doubt whether your view is altogether correct, Cratylus.

CRATYLUS: How so?

SOCRATES: I believe that what you say may be true about numbers, which must bejust what they are, or not be at all; for example, the number ten at oncebecomes other than ten if a unit be added or subtracted, and so of any othernumber: but this does not apply to that which is qualitative or to anythingwhich is represented under an image. I should say rather that the image, ifexpressing in every point the entire reality, would no longer be an image. Letus suppose the existence of two objects: one of them shall be Cratylus, and theother the image of Cratylus; and we will suppose, further, that some God makesnot only a representation such as a painter would make of your outward form andcolour, but also creates an inward organization like yours, having the samewarmth and softness; and into this infuses motion, and soul, and mind, such asyou have, and in a word copies all your qualities, and places them by you inanother form; would you say that this was Cratylus and the image of Cratylus,or that there were two Cratyluses?

CRATYLUS: I should say that there were two Cratyluses.

SOCRATES: Then you see, my friend, that we must find some other principle oftruth in images, and also in names; and not insist that an image is no longeran image when something is added or subtracted. Do you not perceive that imagesare very far from having qualities which are the exact counterpart of therealities which they represent?

CRATYLUS: Yes, I see.

SOCRATES: But then how ridiculous would be the effect of names on things, ifthey were exactly the same with them! For they would be the doubles of them,and no one would be able to determine which were the names and which were therealities.

CRATYLUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: Then fear not, but have the courage to admit that one name may becorrectly and another incorrectly given; and do not insist that the name shallbe exactly the same with the thing; but allow the occasional substitution of awrong letter, and if of a letter also of a noun in a sentence, and if of a nounin a sentence also of a sentence which is not appropriate to the matter, andacknowledge that the thing may be named, and described, so long as the generalcharacter of the thing which you are describing is retained; and this, as youwill remember, was remarked by Hermogenes and myself in the particular instanceof the names of the letters.

CRATYLUS: Yes, I remember.

SOCRATES: Good; and when the general character is preserved, even if some ofthe proper letters are wanting, still the thing is signified;—well, ifall the letters are given; not well, when only a few of them are given. I thinkthat we had better admit this, lest we be punished like travellers in Aeginawho wander about the street late at night: and be likewise told by truthherself that we have arrived too late; or if not, you must find out some newnotion of correctness of names, and no longer maintain that a name is theexpression of a thing in letters or syllables; for if you say both, you will beinconsistent with yourself.

CRATYLUS: I quite acknowledge, Socrates, what you say to be very reasonable.

SOCRATES: Then as we are agreed thus far, let us ask ourselves whether a namerightly imposed ought not to have the proper letters.

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the proper letters are those which are like the things?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Enough then of names which are rightly given. And in names which areincorrectly given, the greater part may be supposed to be made up of proper andsimilar letters, or there would be no likeness; but there will be likewise apart which is improper and spoils the beauty and formation of the word: youwould admit that?

CRATYLUS: There would be no use, Socrates, in my quarrelling with you, since Icannot be satisfied that a name which is incorrectly given is a name at all.

SOCRATES: Do you admit a name to be the representation of a thing?

CRATYLUS: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: But do you not allow that some nouns are primitive, and some derived?

CRATYLUS: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: Then if you admit that primitive or first nouns are representationsof things, is there any better way of framing representations than byassimilating them to the objects as much as you can; or do you prefer thenotion of Hermogenes and of many others, who say that names are conventional,and have a meaning to those who have agreed about them, and who have previousknowledge of the things intended by them, and that convention is the onlyprinciple; and whether you abide by our present convention, or make a new andopposite one, according to which you call small great and greatsmall—that, they would say, makes no difference, if you are only agreed.Which of these two notions do you prefer?

CRATYLUS: Representation by likeness, Socrates, is infinitely better thanrepresentation by any chance sign.

SOCRATES: Very good: but if the name is to be like the thing, the letters outof which the first names are composed must also be like things. Returning tothe image of the picture, I would ask, How could any one ever compose a picturewhich would be like anything at all, if there were not pigments in nature whichresembled the things imitated, and out of which the picture is composed?

CRATYLUS: Impossible.

SOCRATES: No more could names ever resemble any actually existing thing, unlessthe original elements of which they are compounded bore some degree ofresemblance to the objects of which the names are the imitation: And theoriginal elements are letters?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Let me now invite you to consider what Hermogenes and I were sayingabout sounds. Do you agree with me that the letter rho is expressive ofrapidity, motion, and hardness? Were we right or wrong in saying so?

CRATYLUS: I should say that you were right.

SOCRATES: And that lamda was expressive of smoothness, and softness, and thelike?

CRATYLUS: There again you were right.

SOCRATES: And yet, as you are aware, that which is called by us sklerotes, isby the Eretrians called skleroter.

CRATYLUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: But are the letters rho and sigma equivalents; and is there the samesignificance to them in the termination rho, which there is to us in sigma, oris there no significance to one of us?

CRATYLUS: Nay, surely there is a significance to both of us.

SOCRATES: In as far as they are like, or in as far as they are unlike?

CRATYLUS: In as far as they are like.

SOCRATES: Are they altogether alike?

CRATYLUS: Yes; for the purpose of expressing motion.

SOCRATES: And what do you say of the insertion of the lamda? for that isexpressive not of hardness but of softness.

CRATYLUS: Why, perhaps the letter lamda is wrongly inserted, Socrates, andshould be altered into rho, as you were saying to Hermogenes and in my opinionrightly, when you spoke of adding and subtracting letters upon occasion.

SOCRATES: Good. But still the word is intelligible to both of us; when I sayskleros (hard), you know what I mean.

CRATYLUS: Yes, my dear friend, and the explanation of that is custom.

SOCRATES: And what is custom but convention? I utter a sound which Iunderstand, and you know that I understand the meaning of the sound: this iswhat you are saying?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if when I speak you know my meaning, there is an indication givenby me to you?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: This indication of my meaning may proceed from unlike as well as fromlike, for example in the lamda of sklerotes. But if this is true, then you havemade a convention with yourself, and the correctness of a name turns out to beconvention, since letters which are unlike are indicative equally with thosewhich are like, if they are sanctioned by custom and convention. And evensupposing that you distinguish custom from convention ever so much, still youmust say that the signification of words is given by custom and not bylikeness, for custom may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. But aswe are agreed thus far, Cratylus (for I shall assume that your silence givesconsent), then custom and convention must be supposed to contribute to theindication of our thoughts; for suppose we take the instance of number, how canyou ever imagine, my good friend, that you will find names resembling everyindividual number, unless you allow that which you term convention andagreement to have authority in determining the correctness of names? I quiteagree with you that words should as far as possible resemble things; but I fearthat this dragging in of resemblance, as Hermogenes says, is a shabby thing,which has to be supplemented by the mechanical aid of convention with a view tocorrectness; for I believe that if we could always, or almost always, uselikenesses, which are perfectly appropriate, this would be the most perfectstate of language; as the opposite is the most imperfect. But let me ask you,what is the force of names, and what is the use of them?

CRATYLUS: The use of names, Socrates, as I should imagine, is to inform: thesimple truth is, that he who knows names knows also the things which areexpressed by them.

SOCRATES: I suppose you mean to say, Cratylus, that as the name is, so also isthe thing; and that he who knows the one will also know the other, because theyare similars, and all similars fall under the same art or science; andtherefore you would say that he who knows names will also know things.

CRATYLUS: That is precisely what I mean.

SOCRATES: But let us consider what is the nature of this information aboutthings which, according to you, is given us by names. Is it the best sort ofinformation? or is there any other? What do you say?

CRATYLUS: I believe that to be both the only and the best sort of informationabout them; there can be no other.

SOCRATES: But do you believe that in the discovery of them, he who discoversthe names discovers also the things; or is this only the method of instruction,and is there some other method of enquiry and discovery.

CRATYLUS: I certainly believe that the methods of enquiry and discovery are ofthe same nature as instruction.

SOCRATES: Well, but do you not see, Cratylus, that he who follows names in thesearch after things, and analyses their meaning, is in great danger of beingdeceived?

CRATYLUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Why clearly he who first gave names gave them according to hisconception of the things which they signified—did he not?

CRATYLUS: True.

SOCRATES: And if his conception was erroneous, and he gave names according tohis conception, in what position shall we who are his followers find ourselves?Shall we not be deceived by him?

CRATYLUS: But, Socrates, am I not right in thinking that he must surely haveknown; or else, as I was saying, his names would not be names at all? And youhave a clear proof that he has not missed the truth, and the proofis—that he is perfectly consistent. Did you ever observe in speaking thatall the words which you utter have a common character and purpose?

SOCRATES: But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin inerror, he may have forced the remainder into agreement with the original errorand with himself; there would be nothing strange in this, any more than ingeometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and invisible flaw in the firstpart of the process, and are consistently mistaken in the long deductions whichfollow. And this is the reason why every man should expend his chief thoughtand attention on the consideration of his first principles:—are they orare they not rightly laid down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the restwill follow. Now I should be astonished to find that names are reallyconsistent. And here let us revert to our former discussion: Were we not sayingthat all things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea ofmotion is expressed by names? Do you not conceive that to be the meaning ofthem?

CRATYLUS: Yes; that is assuredly their meaning, and the true meaning.

SOCRATES: Let us revert to episteme (knowledge) and observe how ambiguous thisword is, seeming rather to signify stopping the soul at things than going roundwith them; and therefore we should leave the beginning as at present, and notreject the epsilon, but make an insertion of an iota instead of an epsilon (notpioteme, but epiisteme). Take another example: bebaion (sure) is clearly theexpression of station and position, and not of motion. Again, the word istoria(enquiry) bears upon the face of it the stopping (istanai) of the stream; andthe word piston (faithful) certainly indicates cessation of motion; then,again, mneme (memory), as any one may see, expresses rest in the soul, and notmotion. Moreover, words such as amartia and sumphora, which have a bad sense,viewed in the light of their etymologies will be the same as sunesis andepisteme and other words which have a good sense (compare omartein, sunienai,epesthai, sumpheresthai); and much the same may be said of amathia andakolasia, for amathia may be explained as e ama theo iontos poreia, andakolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the names which in theseinstances we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to be framed on thesame principle as those which have the best. And any one I believe who wouldtake the trouble might find many other examples in which the giver of namesindicates, not that things are in motion or progress, but that they are atrest; which is the opposite of motion.

CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, but observe; the greater number express motion.

SOCRATES: What of that, Cratylus? Are we to count them like votes? and iscorrectness of names the voice of the majority? Are we to say of whichever sortthere are most, those are the true ones?

CRATYLUS: No; that is not reasonable.

SOCRATES: Certainly not. But let us have done with this question and proceed toanother, about which I should like to know whether you think with me. Were wenot lately acknowledging that the first givers of names in states, bothHellenic and barbarous, were the legislators, and that the art which gave nameswas the art of the legislator?

CRATYLUS: Quite true.

SOCRATES: Tell me, then, did the first legislators, who were the givers of thefirst names, know or not know the things which they named?

CRATYLUS: They must have known, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Why, yes, friend Cratylus, they could hardly have been ignorant.

CRATYLUS: I should say not.

SOCRATES: Let us return to the point from which we digressed. You were saying,if you remember, that he who gave names must have known the things which henamed; are you still of that opinion?

CRATYLUS: I am.

SOCRATES: And would you say that the giver of the first names had also aknowledge of the things which he named?

CRATYLUS: I should.

SOCRATES: But how could he have learned or discovered things from names if theprimitive names were not yet given? For, if we are correct in our view, theonly way of learning and discovering things, is either to discover names forourselves or to learn them from others.

CRATYLUS: I think that there is a good deal in what you say, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But if things are only to be known through names, how can we supposethat the givers of names had knowledge, or were legislators before there werenames at all, and therefore before they could have known them?

CRATYLUS: I believe, Socrates, the true account of the matter to be, that apower more than human gave things their first names, and that the names whichare thus given are necessarily their true names.

SOCRATES: Then how came the giver of the names, if he was an inspired being orGod, to contradict himself? For were we not saying just now that he made somenames expressive of rest and others of motion? Were we mistaken?

CRATYLUS: But I suppose one of the two not to be names at all.

SOCRATES: And which, then, did he make, my good friend; those which areexpressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion? This is a pointwhich, as I said before, cannot be determined by counting them.

CRATYLUS: No; not in that way, Socrates.

SOCRATES: But if this is a battle of names, some of them asserting that theyare like the truth, others contending that THEY are, how or by what criterionare we to decide between them? For there are no other names to which appeal canbe made, but obviously recourse must be had to another standard which, withoutemploying names, will make clear which of the two are right; and this must be astandard which shows the truth of things.

CRATYLUS: I agree.

SOCRATES: But if that is true, Cratylus, then I suppose that things may beknown without names?

CRATYLUS: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can there be ofknowing them, except the true and natural way, through their affinities, whenthey are akin to each other, and through themselves? For that which is otherand different from them must signify something other and different from them.

CRATYLUS: What you are saying is, I think, true.

SOCRATES: Well, but reflect; have we not several times acknowledged that namesrightly given are the likenesses and images of the things which they name?

CRATYLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: Let us suppose that to any extent you please you can learn thingsthrough the medium of names, and suppose also that you can learn them from thethings themselves—which is likely to be the nobler and clearer way; tolearn of the image, whether the image and the truth of which the image is theexpression have been rightly conceived, or to learn of the truth whether thetruth and the image of it have been duly executed?

CRATYLUS: I should say that we must learn of the truth.

SOCRATES: How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect,beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things isnot to be derived from names. No; they must be studied and investigated inthemselves.

CRATYLUS: Clearly, Socrates.

SOCRATES: There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed upon bythe appearance of such a multitude of names, all tending in the same direction.I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under theidea that all things were in motion and flux; which was their sincere but, Ithink, mistaken opinion. And having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves,they are carried round, and want to drag us in after them. There is a matter,master Cratylus, about which I often dream, and should like to ask youropinion: Tell me, whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, orany other absolute existence?

CRATYLUS: Certainly, Socrates, I think so.

SOCRATES: Then let us seek the true beauty: not asking whether a face is fair,or anything of that sort, for all such things appear to be in a flux; but letus ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful.

CRATYLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And can we rightly speak of a beauty which is always passing away,and is first this and then that; must not the same thing be born and retire andvanish while the word is in our mouths?

CRATYLUS: Undoubtedly.

SOCRATES: Then how can that be a real thing which is never in the same state?for obviously things which are the same cannot change while they remain thesame; and if they are always the same and in the same state, and never departfrom their original form, they can never change or be moved.

CRATYLUS: Certainly they cannot.

SOCRATES: Nor yet can they be known by any one; for at the moment that theobserver approaches, then they become other and of another nature, so that youcannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for you cannot knowthat which has no state.

CRATYLUS: True.

SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all,if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; forknowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abideand exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when thechange occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always goingon, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there willbe no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and thatwhich is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every otherthing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux,as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things,or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say,is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himselfor the education of his mind in the power of names: neither will he so fartrust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge whichcondemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; hewill not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world isa man who has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is alsovery likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easilypersuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such adoctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found thetruth, come and tell me.

CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I havebeen considering the matter already, and the result of a great deal of troubleand consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.

SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall give me alesson; but at present, go into the country, as you are intending, andHermogenes shall set you on your way.

CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue to thinkabout these things yourself.

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