The Complete Works of Plato

by Plato

Suppose, then, that we agree to distinguish between the congenial and the like—in the intoxication of argument, that may perhaps be allowed.

Middle Works

Cratylus Table of Contents Introduction

We need not suppose that Plato used words in order to conceal his thoughts, or that he would have been unintelligible to an educated contemporary.

A satire is unmeaning unless we can place ourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in which it was written.

They were also seeking to distinguish the parts of speech and to enquire into the relation of subject and predicate.

Moreover, in this, as in most of the dialogues of Plato, allowance has to be made for the character of Socrates.

The two subordinate persons of the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, are at the opposite poles of the argument. But after a while the disciple of the Sophist and the follower of Heracleitus are found to be not so far removed from one another as at first sight appeared; and both show an inclination to accept the third view which Socrates interposes between them.

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 perfect expression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound (a fallacy which is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language).

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 is the rational.

It is a work not of chance, but of art; the dialectician is the artificer of words, and the legisl...

We can hardly say that Plato was aware of the truth, that 'languages are not made, but grow.'

But he means to express generally that language is the product of intelligence, and that languages belong to States and not to individuals.

A better conception of language could not have been formed in Plato's age, than that which he attributes to Socrates.

1. We shall have occasion to show more at length, in the Introduction to future dialogues, that the so-called Platonic ideas are only a semi-mythical form, in which he attempts to realize abstractions, and that they are replaced in his later writings by a rational theory of psychology.

Plato is a supporter of the Onomatopoetic theory of language; that is to say, he supposes words to be formed by the imitation of ideas in sounds; he also recognises the effect of time, the influence of foreign languages, the desire of euphony, to be formative principles; and he admits a certain element of chance.

Socrates shows that the truth or correctness of names can only be ascertained by an appeal to etymology.

The truth of names is to be found in the analysis of their elements.

1. The answer to this difficulty has been already anticipated in part: Socrates is not a dogmatic teacher, and therefore he puts on this wild and fanciful disguise, in order that the truth may be permitted to appear:

2. as Benfey remarks, an erroneous example may illustrate a principle of language as well as a true one:

3. many of these etymologies, as, for example, that of dikaion, are indicated, by the manner in which Socrates speaks of them, ...

4. the philosophy of language had not made such progress as would have justified Plato in pr...

Like his master Socrates, 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 under which they are to be pursued, but, as in the Timaeus, ca...

The irony of Socrates places him above and beyond the errors of his contemporaries.

While delivering a lecture on the philosophy of language, Socrates is also satirizing the 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; and Socrates makes merry at the expense of the etymologists.

Socrates, touching on some of the characteristic difficulties of early Greek philosophy, endeavours to show Cratylus that imitation may be partial or imperfect, that a knowledge of things is higher than a knowledge of names, and that there can be no knowledge if all things are in a state of transition.

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 or correctness of names? Socrates replies, that hard is knowledge, and the nature of names is a considerable part of knowledge: he has never been to hear the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus; and having only attended the single-drachma course, he is not competent to give an opinion on such matters.

And not only things, but actions, have distinct natures, and are done by different processes.

There is a natural way of cutting or burning, and a natural instrument with which men cut 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 must name according to a natural proce...

We cut with a 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 ...

The pilot directs the carpenter how to make the rudder, and the dialectician directs the legislator how he is to impose names; for to express the 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 natural correctness of names.'

Indeed I cannot; but I see that you have advanced; for you now admit that there is a correctness of names, and th...

The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are really the same,—the one means a king, and the other is 'a holder or possessor.' For as the 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 a calf, then that would be called a calf.

Whether the syllables of a name are the same or not makes no difference, provided...

Psuche may be thought to be the reviving, or refreshing, or animating principle—e anapsuchousa to soma; but I am afraid that Euthyphro and his disciples will scorn this derivation, and I must find another: shall we identify the soul with the 'ordering mind' of Anaxagoras, and say that psuche, quasi phuseche = e phusin echei or ochei?—this might easily be refined into psyche. 'That is a more artistic 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 the soul signifies (semainei) her wishes.'

Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring—to diattomenon kai ethoumenon.

Dionysus is o didous ton oinon, and oinos is quasi oionous because wine makes those think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (nous) who have none.

My opinion is, that primitive men were like some modern philosophers, who, by always going round in their search after the nature of things, become dizzy; and this phenomenon, which was really in themselves, they imagined to take place in the external world.

You have no doubt remarked, that the doctrine of the universal flux, or generation of things, is indicated in names.

All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature of things; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And let me ask another question,—If we had no faculty of speech, how should we communicate with one another?

The body can only express anything by imitation; 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 may imitate sheep or goats without naming them. What, then, is a name? In the first place, a name is not a musical, or, secondly, a pictorial imitation, but an imitation of that kind which expresses the nature of a thing; and is the invention 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 primary elements of...

First, we separate the alphabet into classes of letters, distinguishing the consonants, mutes, vowels, and semivowels; and when we have learnt them singly, we shall learn to know them in their various combinations of two or more letters; just as the painter ...