Cratylus | Page 3

no additional
cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form
(or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small
Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

CRATYLUS
by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of
Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and
metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of
the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of
the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not succeeded in dispelling.
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. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also find a
difficulty in determining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote
satires in the form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of other
satirical writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may
be assigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness of this
species of composition; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a state of life
and literature which has passed away. A satire is unmeaning unless we
can place ourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in
which it was written. Had the treatise of Antisthenes upon words, or the
speculations of Cratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth
century B.C., on the nature of 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,' we should have understood Plato better, and many
points which are now attributed to the extravagance of Socrates'
humour would have been found, like the allusions of Aristophanes in
the Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists and grammarians of the
day.
For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many
questions were beginning to be asked about language which were
parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were
illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a
correctness in words, and were they given by nature or convention? In
the presocratic philosophy mankind had been striving to attain an
expression of their ideas, and now they were beginning to ask
themselves whether the expression might not be distinguished from the
idea? They were also seeking to distinguish the parts of speech and to
enquire into the relation of subject and predicate. Grammar and logic
were moving about somewhere in the depths of the human soul, but
they were not yet awakened into consciousness and had not found

names for themselves, or terms by which they might be expressed. Of
these beginnings of the study of language we know little, and there
necessarily arises an obscurity when the surroundings of such a work as
the Cratylus are taken away. Moreover, in this, as in most of the
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 is consistent with his own profession of ignorance.
Hence his ridicule of the new school of etymology is interspersed with
many declarations 'that he knows nothing,' 'that he has learned from
Euthyphro,' and the like. Even the truest things which he says are
depreciated by himself. He professes to be guessing, but the guesses of
Plato are better than all the other theories of the ancients respecting
language put together.
The dialogue hardly derives any light from Plato's other writings, and
still less from Scholiasts and Neoplatonist writers. Socrates must be
interpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a
difficulty in understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other
interlocutors in the dialogue. Does he agree with Cratylus or with
Hermogenes, and is he serious in those