Cratylus | Page 5

(a fallacy
which is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language).
He is at once a philosopher and a sophist; for while wanting to rest
language on an immutable basis, he would deny the possibility of
falsehood. He is inclined to derive all truth from language, and in
language he sees reflected the philosophy of Heracleitus. His views are
not like those of Hermogenes, hastily taken up, but are said to be the
result of mature consideration, although he is described as still a young
man. With a tenacity characteristic of the Heracleitean philosophers, he
clings to the doctrine of the flux. (Compare Theaet.) Of the real
Cratylus we know nothing, except that he is recorded by Aristotle to
have been the friend or teacher of Plato; nor have we any proof that he
resembled the likeness of him in Plato any more than the Critias of
Plato is like the real Critias, or the Euthyphro in this dialogue like the
other Euthyphro, the diviner, 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 is the rational. It is a work not of chance, but
of art; the dialectician is the artificer of words, and the legislator gives
authority to them. They are the expressions or imitations in sound of

things. In a sense, Cratylus is right in saying that things have by nature
names; for nature is not opposed either to art or to law. But vocal
imitation, like any other copy, may be imperfectly executed; and in this
way an element of chance or convention enters in. There is much which
is accidental or exceptional in language. Some words have had their
original meaning so obscured, that they require to be helped out by
convention. But still the true name is that which has a natural meaning.
Thus nature, art, chance, all combine in the formation of language. And
the three views respectively propounded by Hermogenes, Socrates,
Cratylus, may be described as the conventional, the artificial or rational,
and the natural. The view of Socrates is the meeting-point of the other
two, just as conceptualism is the meeting-point of nominalism and
realism.
We can hardly say that Plato was aware of the truth, that 'languages are
not made, but grow.' But still, when he says that 'the legislator made
language with the dialectician standing on his right hand,' we need not
infer from this that he conceived words, like coins, to be issued from
the mint of the State. The creator of laws and of social life is naturally
regarded as the creator of language, according to Hellenic notions, and
the philosopher is his natural advisor. We are not to suppose that the
legislator is performing any extraordinary function; he is merely the
Eponymus of the State, who prescribes rules for the dialectician and for
all other artists. According to a truly Platonic mode of approaching the
subject, language, like virtue in the Republic, is examined by the
analogy of the arts. Words are works of art which may be equally made
in different materials, and are well made when they have a meaning. Of
the process which he thus describes, Plato had probably no very
definite notion. 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. Yet many persons have
thought that 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 to bring Plato's theory of language into accordance with the

received doctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression
created by Socrates himself, that he is not in earnest, and is only
indulging the fancy of the hour.
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. (See introductions to the Meno and the Sophist.) And in
the Cratylus he gives a general account of the nature and origin of
language, in which Adam Smith, Rousseau, and other writers of the last
century, would have substantially agreed. At the end of the dialogue, he
speaks as in the Symposium and Republic of absolute beauty and good;
but he never supposed that they were capable of being embodied in
words.