Cratylus | Page 6

Of the names of the ideas, he would have said, as he says of the
names of the Gods, that we know nothing. Even the realism of Cratylus
is not based upon the ideas of Plato, but upon the flux of Heracleitus.
Here, as in the Sophist and Politicus, Plato expressly draws attention to
the want of agreement in words and things. Hence we are led to infer,
that the view of Socrates is not the less Plato's own, because not based
upon the ideas; 2nd, that Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent
with the rest of his philosophy.
2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest.
He is discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the
'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is
speaking, 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 when he describes himself as inspired or maddened by
Euthyphro, with whom he has been sitting from the early dawn
(compare Phaedrus and Lysias; Phaedr.) and expresses his intention of
yielding to the illusion to-day, and to-morrow he will go to a priest and
be purified, we easily see that his words are not to be taken seriously.
In this part of the dialogue his dread of committing impiety, the
pretended derivation of his wisdom from another, the extravagance of
some of his etymologies, and, in general, the manner in which the fun,
fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us strongly of the

Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending over more than half the
dialogue. But then, we remember that the Euthydemus is a still longer
jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is
parodying the ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is
ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and grammarians. The
fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic
books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way
into later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the
conjectures of Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but
this does not prove that they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his
age in his conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of
mythology. (Compare Phaedrus.)
When the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has abated, Socrates
ends, as he has begun, with a rational explanation of language. Still he
preserves his 'know nothing' disguise, and himself declares his first
notions about names to be reckless and ridiculous. Having explained
compound words by resolving them into their original elements, he
now proceeds to analyse simple words 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 is either weak or extravagant. 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. But he gives no imitation in all this that he is
preparing the way for the construction of an ideal language. Or that he
has any Eleatic speculation to oppose to the Heracleiteanism of
Cratylus.
The theory of language which is propounded in the Cratylus is in
accordance with the later phase of the philosophy of Plato, and would
have been regarded by him as in the main true. The dialogue is also a
satire on the philological fancies of the day. Socrates in pursuit of his
vocation as a detector of false knowledge, lights by accident on the
truth. He is guessing, he is dreaming; he has heard, as he says in the

Phaedrus, from another: no one is more surprised than himself at his
own discoveries. And yet some of his best remarks, as for example his
view of the derivation of Greek words from other languages, or of the
permutations of letters, or again, his observation that in speaking of the
Gods we are only speaking of our names of them, occur among these
flights of humour.
We can imagine a character having a profound insight into the nature of
men and things, and yet hardly dwelling upon them seriously; blending
inextricably sense and nonsense; sometimes enveloping in a blaze of
jests the most serious matters, and then again allowing the truth to peer
through; enjoying the flow of his own humour,