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Title: Cratylus
Author: Plato
Translator: B. Jowett
Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1616]
Release Date: January, 1999
Language: English
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Produced 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 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 we separate his jest from his
earnest?--Sunt bona, sunt quaedum mediocria, sunt mala plura. Most
of them are ridiculously bad, and yet among them are found, as if by
accident, principles of philology which are unsurpassed in any ancient
writer, and even in advance of any philologer of the last century.
May we suppose that Plato, like Lucian, has been amusing his fancy by
writing a comedy in the form of a prose dialogue? And what is the final
result of the enquiry? Is Plato an upholder of the conventional theory
of language, which he acknowledges to be imperfect? or does he mean to
imply that a perfect language can only be based on his own theory of
ideas? Or if this latter explanation is refuted by his silence, then
in what relation does his account of language stand to the rest of his
philosophy? Or may we be so bold as to deny the connexion between them?
(For the allusion to the ideas at the end of the dialogue is merely
intended to show that we must not put words in the place of things or
realities, which is a thesis strongly insisted on by Plato in many other
passages)...These are some of the first thoughts which arise in the mind
of the reader of the Cratylus. And the consideration of them may form a
convenient introduction to the general subject of the dialogue.
We must not expect all the parts of a dialogue of Plato to tend equally
to some clearly-defined end. His idea of literary art is not the
absolute proportion of the whole, such as we appear to find in a Greek
temple or statue; nor should his 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 plastic than wax' (Rep.), and may be
moulded into any form. He wanders on from one 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 determined beforehand, as in a modern didactic
treatise, the nature and limits of the subject, would have been fatal
to the spirit of enquiry or discovery, which is the soul of the
dialogue...These remarks are applicable to nearly all the works of
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 more truly viewed:--they are dramatic sketches of an argument. We
have found that in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno,
we arrived at no conclusion--the different sides of the argument
were personified in the different speakers; but the victory was not
distinctly attributed to any of them, nor the truth wholly the property
of any. And in the Cratylus we have no reason to assume that Socrates is
either wholly right or wholly wrong, or that Plato, though he evidently
inclines to him, had any other aim than that of personifying, in the
characters of Hermogenes, Socrates, and Cratylus, the three theories of
language which are respectively maintained by them.
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. First, Hermogenes, the poor brother of the rich Callias,
expounds the doctrine that names are conventional; like the names of
slaves, they may be given and altered at pleasure. This is one of those
principles which, whether applied to society or language, explains
everything and nothing. For in all things there is an element of
convention; but the admission of this does not help us to understand
the 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 only a part of a sophistical whole, and ultimately tends to
abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood. Hermogenes is very
ready to throw aside the sophistical tenet, and listens with a sort of
half admiration, half belief, to the 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 perfect expression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound
(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. 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, and puzzling mankind
by an ironical exaggeration of their absurdities. Such were Aristophanes
and Rabelais; such, in a different style, were Sterne, Jean Paul,
Hamann,--writers who sometimes become unintelligible through the
extravagance of their fancies. Such is the character which 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
what relation does the satirical or etymological portion of the dialogue
stand to the serious? Granting all that can be said about the provoking
irony of Socrates, about the parody of Euthyphro, or Prodicus, or
Antisthenes, how does the long catalogue of etymologies furnish any
answer to the question of Hermogenes, which is evidently the main thesis
of the dialogue: What is the truth, or correctness, or principle of
names?
After illustrating the nature of correctness by the analogy of the arts,
and then, as in the Republic, ironically appealing to the authority of
the Homeric poems, 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. But why does he admit
etymologies which are absurd, based on Heracleitean fancies, fourfold
interpretations of words, impossible unions and separations of syllables
and letters?
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, to have been current in his own
age: 4. the philosophy of language had not made such progress as would
have justified Plato in propounding real derivations. 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,
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 of time on his hands.'
The irony of Socrates places him above and beyond the errors of his
contemporaries.
The Cratylus is full of humour and satirical touches: the inspiration
which comes from Euthyphro, and his prancing steeds, the light admixture
of quotations from Homer, and the spurious dialectic which is applied
to them; the jest about the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus, which is
declared on the best authority, viz. his own, to be a complete education
in grammar and rhetoric; the double explanation of the name Hermogenes,
either as 'not being in luck,' or 'being no speaker;' the dearly-bought
wisdom of Callias, 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.
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. The simplicity of Hermogenes, who is ready
to believe anything that he is told, heightens the effect. Socrates in
his genial and ironical mood hits right and left at his adversaries:
Ouranos is so called apo tou oran ta ano, which, as some philosophers
say, is the way to have a pure mind; the sophists are by a fanciful
explanation converted into heroes; 'the givers of names were like some
philosophers who fancy that the earth goes round because their heads are
always going round.' There is a great deal of 'mischief' lurking in the
following: 'I found myself in greater perplexity about justice than I
was before I began to learn;' 'The rho in katoptron must be the addition
of some one who cares nothing about truth, but thinks only of putting
the mouth into shape;' 'Tales and falsehoods have generally to do with
the Tragic and goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them.' Several
philosophers and sophists are mentioned by name: first, Protagoras and
Euthydemus are assailed; then the interpreters of Homer, oi palaioi
Omerikoi (compare Arist. Met.) and the Orphic poets are alluded to
by the way; then he discovers a hive of wisdom in the philosophy of
Heracleitus;--the doctrine of the flux is contained in the word ousia (=
osia the pushing principle), an anticipation of Anaxagoras is found in
psuche and selene. Again, he ridicules the arbitrary methods of pulling
out and putting in letters which were in vogue among the philologers of
his time; or slightly scoffs at contemporary religious beliefs. Lastly,
he is impatient of hearing from the half-converted Cratylus the doctrine
that falsehood can neither be spoken, nor uttered, nor addressed;
a piece of sophistry attributed to Gorgias, which reappears in the
Sophist. And he proceeds to demolish, with no less delight than he had
set up, the Heracleitean theory of language.
In the latter part of the dialogue Socrates becomes more serious,
though he does not lay aside but rather aggravates his banter of the
Heracleiteans, whom here, as in the Theaetetus, he delights to ridicule.
What was the origin of this enmity we can hardly determine:--was it
due to the natural dislike which may be supposed to exist between the
'patrons of the flux' and the 'friends of the ideas' (Soph.)? or is it
to be attributed to the indignation which Plato felt at having wasted
his time upon 'Cratylus and the doctrines of Heracleitus' in the days of
his youth? 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. But Cratylus, who does not easily apprehend
the argument from common sense, remains unconvinced, and on the whole
inclines to his former opinion. Some profound philosophical remarks are
scattered up and down, admitting of an application not only to language
but to knowledge generally; such as the assertion that 'consistency is
no test of truth:' or again, 'If we are over-precise about words, truth
will say "too late" to us as to the belated 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 a close resemblance to the earlier dialogues, especially
to the Phaedrus and Euthydemus. The manner in which the ideas are spoken
of at the end of the dialogue, also indicates a comparatively early
date. The imaginative element is still in full vigour; the Socrates
of the Cratylus is the Socrates of the Apology and Symposium, not yet
Platonized; and he describes, as in the Theaetetus, the philosophy of
Heracleitus by 'unsavoury' similes--he cannot believe that the world
is like 'a leaky vessel,' or 'a man who has a running at the nose'; he
attributes the flux of the world to the swimming in some folks' heads.
On the other hand, the relation of thought to language is omitted here,
but is treated of in the Sophist. These grounds are not sufficient to
enable us to arrive at a precise conclusion. But we shall not be far
wrong in placing the Cratylus 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 true name, 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 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. When Cratylus denies that Hermogenes is a true name, he
supposes him to mean that he is not a true son of Hermes, because he
is never in luck. But he would like to have an open council and to hear
both sides.
Hermogenes is of opinion that there is no principle in names; they may
be changed, as we change the names of slaves, whenever we please, and
the altered name is as good as the original one.
You mean to say, for instance, rejoins Socrates, that if I agree to call
a man a horse, then a man will be rightly called a horse by me, and a
man by the rest of the world? But, surely, there is in words a true
and a false, as there are true and false propositions. If a whole
proposition be true or false, then the parts of a proposition may be
true or false, and the least parts as well as the greatest; and the
least parts are names, and therefore names may be true or false. Would
Hermogenes maintain that anybody may give a name to anything, and as
many names as he pleases; and would all these names be always true at
the time of giving them? Hermogenes replies that this is the only way
in which he can conceive that names are correct; and he appeals to the
practice of different nations, and of the different Hellenic tribes, in
confirmation of his view. Socrates asks, whether the things differ
as the words which represent them differ:--Are we to maintain with
Protagoras, that what appears is? Hermogenes has always been puzzled
about this, but acknowledges, when he is pressed by Socrates, that there
are a few very good men in the world, and a great many very bad; and the
very good are the wise, and the very bad are the foolish; and this
is not mere appearance but reality. Nor is he disposed to say with
Euthydemus, that all things equally and always belong to all men; in
that case, again, there would be no distinction between bad and good
men. But then, the only remaining possibility is, that all things have
their several distinct natures, and are independent of our notions about
them. 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 process, and with a proper instrument. 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 name distinguishes the natures of things. The weaver will use the
shuttle well,--that is, like a weaver; 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 skilled person. But who makes a name?
Does not the law give names, and does not the teacher receive them from
the legislator? He is the skilled person who makes them, and of all
skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how does the carpenter make or
repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at the
ideal which he has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work
differ, so ought the instruments which make them to differ. The several
kinds of shuttles ought to answer in material and form to the several
kinds of webs. And the legislator ought to know the different materials
and forms of which names are made in Hellas and other countries. But
who is to be the judge of the proper form? The judge of shuttles is the
weaver who uses them; the judge of lyres is the player of the lyre;
the judge of ships is the pilot. And will not the judge who is able to
direct the legislator in his work of naming, be he who knows how to
use the names--he who can ask and answer questions--in short, the
dialectician? 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 that not every one can give
a name. But what is the nature of this correctness or truth, you must
learn from the Sophists, of whom 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 from him at second-hand. 'Well,
but I have just given up Protagoras, and I should be inconsistent in
going to learn of him.' Then if you reject him you may learn of the
poets, and in particular of Homer, who distinguishes the names given by
Gods and men to the same things, as in the verse about the river God
who fought with Hephaestus, 'whom the Gods call Xanthus, and men call
Scamander;' or in the lines in which he mentions the bird which the
Gods call 'Chalcis,' and men 'Cymindis;' or the hill which men call
'Batieia,' and the Gods 'Myrinna's Tomb.' Here is an important lesson;
for the Gods must of course be right in their use of names. And this is
not the only truth about philology which may be learnt from Homer. Does
he not say that Hector's son had two names--
'Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others Astyanax'?
Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the
other name was conferred by the women? And which are more likely to be
right--the wiser or 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 was called Astyanax ('king of the city'), because
his father saved the city. 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
the meaning is retained. For example; the names of letters, whether
vowels or consonants, do not correspond to their sounds, with the
exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The name Beta has three
letters added to the sound--and yet this does not alter the sense of the
word, or prevent the whole name having the value which the legislator
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 words by which they are signified may be disguised, and yet amid
differences of sound the etymologist may recognise the same notion, just
as the physician recognises the 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 in war), or Eupolemus (good
warrior); but the two words present the same idea of leader or general,
like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equally denote 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 no longer resembles the parent, then the names no longer
agree. This may be illustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son
Orestes, of whom the former has a name significant of his patience at
the siege of Troy; while the name of the latter indicates his savage,
man-of-the-mountain nature. Atreus again, for his 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 sees what
is near only), because in his eagerness to win Hippodamia, he was
unconscious of the remoter consequences which the murder of Myrtilus
would entail upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly changed,
offers two etymologies; 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 all live: this is
implied in the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put together and
interpreted is di on ze panta. There may, at first sight, appear to be
some irreverence 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 akeraton tou 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, as philosophers say, is the way to have a pure
mind. The earlier portion of Hesiod's genealogy has escaped my memory,
or I would try more conclusions of the same sort. 'You talk like an
oracle.' I caught the infection from Euthyphro, who gave me a long
lecture which began at dawn, and has not only entered into my ears, but
filled my soul, and my intention is to yield to the inspiration to-day;
and to-morrow I will be exorcised by some priest or sophist. 'Go on;
I am anxious to hear the rest.' Now that we have a general notion,
how shall we proceed? What names will afford the most crucial test 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
and demi-gods. Gods are so called, apo tou thein, from the verb 'to
run;' because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and they
being 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, and by 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 are well 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 of God saw the daughters of men that they
were fair;' or perhaps they were a species of sophists or rhetoricians,
and so called apo tou erotan, or eirein, from their habit of spinning
questions; for eirein is equivalent to legein. I get all this from
Euthyphro; and now a new and ingenious idea comes into my mind, and,
if I am not careful, I shall be wiser than I ought to be by to-morrow's
dawn. My idea is, that we may put in and pull out letters at pleasure
and alter the accents (as, for example, Dii philos may be turned into
Diphilos), and we may make words into sentences and sentences into
words. The name anthrotos is a case in point, for a letter has been
omitted and the accent changed; the original meaning being o anathron a
opopen--he who looks up at what he sees. 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.' But more probably, the word is Orphic,
and simply denotes that the body is the place of ward in which the soul
suffers the penalty of sin,--en o sozetai. 'I should like to hear some
more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one
of Zeus.' 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 I call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let
them know beforehand that we are not presuming to enquire about them,
but only about the names which they usually bear. Let us begin with
Hestia. What did he mean who gave the name Hestia? 'That is a very
difficult question.' O, my dear Hermogenes, I believe that there was a
power of philosophy and talk among the first inventors of names, both in
our own and in other languages; for even in 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: this agrees with the
fact that to Hestia the first sacrifices are offered. There is also
another reading--osia, which implies that 'pushing' (othoun) is the
first principle of all things. And here I seem to discover a delicate
allusion to the flux of Heracleitus--that antediluvian philosopher
who cannot walk twice in the same stream; and this flux of his may
accomplish yet greater marvels. For the names Cronos and Rhea cannot
have been accidental; the giver of them must have known something about
the doctrine of Heracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence
in the words of Hesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, 'the origin of Gods;'
and in the verse of Orpheus, in which he describes Oceanus espousing
his sister Tethys. Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring--to
diattomenon kai ethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the
feet, because you cannot walk on the sea--the epsilon is inserted by
way of ornament; or perhaps the name may have been originally polleidon,
meaning, that the God knew many things (polla eidos): he may also be
the shaker, apo tou seiein,--in this case, pi and delta have been added.
Pluto is connected with ploutos, because wealth comes out of the earth;
or the word may be a euphemism for Hades, which is usually derived apo
tou aeidous, because the God is concerned with the invisible. 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 with horror
of the world below from which no one may return. The reason why his
subjects never wish to come back, even if they could, is that the
God enchains them by the strongest of spells, namely by the desire of
virtue, which they hope to obtain by constant association with him. He
is the perfect and accomplished Sophist and the great benefactor of the
other world; for he has much more than he wants there, and hence he is
called Pluto or the rich. He will have nothing to do with the souls of
men while in the body, because he cannot work his will with them so
long as they are confused and entangled by fleshly lusts. Demeter is the
mother and giver of food--e didousa meter tes edodes. Here is erate tis,
or perhaps the legislator may have been thinking of the weather, and has
merely transposed the letters of the word aer. Pherephatta, that word
of awe, is pheretapha, which is only an euphonious contraction of e tou
pheromenou ephaptomene,--all things are in motion, and she in her wisdom
moves with them, and the wise God Hades consorts with her--there
is nothing very terrible in this, any more than in the her other
appellation Persephone, which is also significant of her wisdom (sophe).
Apollo is another name, which is supposed to have some dreadful meaning,
but is susceptible of at least four perfectly innocent explanations.
First, he is the purifier 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, supposing alpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo
becomes equivalent to ama polon, which points to both his musical and
his heavenly attributes; for there is a 'moving together' alike in music
and in the harmony of the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in
order to avoid the ill-omened sound of destruction. The Muses are so
called--apo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her
willingness (ethelemon), or because she is ready to forgive and forget
(lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy well-balanced nature,
dia to artemes, or as aretes istor; or as a lover of virginity, aroton
misesasa. One of these explanations is probably true,--perhaps all of
them. 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. The established derivation of Aphrodite dia ten tou athrou genesin
may be accepted on the authority of Hesiod. Again, there is the name of
Pallas, or Athene, which we, who are Athenians, must not forget. Pallas
is derived from armed dances--apo tou pallein ta opla. For Athene we
must turn to the allegorical interpreters of Homer, who make the name
equivalent to theonoe, or possibly the word was originally ethonoe and
signified moral intelligence (en ethei noesis). Hephaestus, again, is
the lord of light--o tou phaeos istor. 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 if you suggest other
words, you will see how the horses of Euthyphro prance. 'Only one more
God; tell me about my godfather Hermes.' He is ermeneus, 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 the son of Hermes, is speech
or the brother of speech, and is called Pan because speech indicates
everything--o pan menuon. He has two forms, a true and a false; and is
in the upper part smooth, and in the lower part shaggy. He is the goat
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 take first?
Let us begin with elios, or the sun. The Doric form elios helps us to
see that he is so called because at his rising he gathers (alizei) men
together, or because he rolls about (eilei) the earth, or because he
variegates (aiolei = poikillei) the earth. Selene is an anticipation
of Anaxagoras, being a contraction of selaenoneoaeia, the light (selas)
which is ever old and new, and which, as Anaxagoras says, is borrowed
from the sun; the name was harmonized into selanaia, a form which is
still in use. 'That is a true dithyrambic name.' Meis is so called apo
tou meiousthai, from suffering diminution, and astron is from astrape
(lightning), which is an improvement of anastrope, that which turns the
eyes inside out. 'How do you explain pur n udor?' I suspect that pur,
which, like udor n kuon, is found in Phrygian, is a foreign word; for
the Hellenes have borrowed much from the barbarians, and I always resort
to this theory of a foreign origin when I am at a 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 quasi aeitheer
oti aei thei peri ton aera: ge, gaia quasi genneteira (compare the
Homeric form gegaasi); ora (with an omega), or, according to the old
Attic form ora (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 two parts, en eauto and etazon, like di on ze into Dios
and Zenos.
'You make surprising progress.' True; I am run away with, and am not
even yet at my utmost speed. 'I should like very much to hear your
account of the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in
those charming words, wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest?' To
explain all that will be a serious business; still, as I have put on
the lion's skin, appearances must be maintained. 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. 'No,
I never did.' Phronesis is only phoras kai rou noesis, or perhaps phoras
onesis, and in any case is connected with pheresthai; gnome is gones
skepsis kai nomesis; noesis is neou or gignomenon esis; the word neos
implies that creation is always going on--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 foreign look--the
meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things, and may be
illustrated by the poetical esuthe and the Lacedaemonian proper name
Sous, or Rush; agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,--for all things
are in motion, and some are swifter than others: dikaiosune is clearly
e tou dikaiou sunesis. The word dikaion is more troublesome, and appears
to mean the subtle penetrating power which, as the lovers of motion say,
preserves all things, and is the cause of all things, quasi diaion going
through--the letter kappa being inserted for the sake of euphony. This
is a great mystery which has been confided to me; but when I ask for an
explanation I am thought obtrusive, and another derivation is proposed
to me. Justice is said to be o kaion, or the sun; and when I joyfully
repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered, 'What, is there no justice
when the sun is down?' And when I entreat my questioner to tell me his
own opinion, he replies, that justice is fire 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 the ordering mind. 'I
think that some one must have told you this.' And not the rest? Let me
proceed then, in the hope of proving to you my originality. Andreia is
quasi anpeia quasi e ano roe, the stream which flows upwards, and
is opposed to injustice, which clearly hinders the principle of
penetration; arren and aner have a similar derivation; gune is the same
as gone; thelu is derived apo tes theles, because the teat makes things
flourish (tethelenai), and the word thallein itself implies increase
of youth, which is swift 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 an aphaeresis of tau and an epenthesis
of omicron in two places, may be identified with echonoe, and signifies
'that which has mind.'
'A very poor etymology.' Yes; but you must remember that all language is
in process of change; letters are taken in and put out for the sake of
euphony, and time is also a great alterer of words. For example, what
business has the letter rho in the word katoptron, or the letter sigma
in the word sphigx? The additions are often such that it is impossible
to make out the original word; and yet, if you may put in and pull out,
as you like, any name is equally good for any object. The fact is, that
great dictators of literature like yourself should observe the rules of
moderation. 'I will do my best.' But do not be too much of a precisian,
or you will paralyze me. If you will let me add mechane, apo tou mekous,
which means polu, and anein, I shall be at the summit of my powers, from
which elevation I will examine the two words kakia and arete. The first
is easily explained in accordance with what has preceded; for all things
being in a flux, kakia is to kakos ion. This derivation is illustrated
by the word deilia, which ought to have come after andreia, and may
be regarded as o lian desmos tes psuches, just as aporia signifies an
impediment to motion (from alpha not, and poreuesthai to go), and arete
is euporia, which is the opposite of this--the everflowing (aei reousa
or aeireite), or the eligible, quasi airete. You will think that I am
inventing, but I say that if kakia is right, then arete is also right.
But what is kakon? That is a very obscure word, to which I can only
apply my old notion and declare that kakon is a foreign word. Next, let
us proceed to kalon, aischron. The latter is doubtless contracted from
aeischoroun, quasi aei ischon roun. The inventor of words being a patron
of the flux, was a great enemy to stagnation. Kalon is to kaloun ta
pragmata--this is mind (nous or dianoia); which is also the principle of
beauty; and which doing the works of beauty, is therefore rightly
called the beautiful. The meaning of sumpheron is explained by previous
examples;--like episteme, signifying that the soul moves in harmony with
the world (sumphora, sumpheronta). Kerdos is to pasi kerannumenon--that
which mingles with all things: lusiteloun is equivalent to to tes phoras
luon to telos, and is not to be taken in the vulgar sense of gainful,
but rather in that of swift, being the principle which makes motion
immortal and unceasing; ophelimon is apo tou ophellein--that which gives
increase: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin. Blaberon is
to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou--that which injures or seeks to
bind the stream. The proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too
much of a mouthful--like a prelude on the flute in honour of Athene. The
word zemiodes 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 is one of these disguised words. You know that
according to the old pronunciation, which is especially affected by the
women, who are great conservatives, iota and delta were used where we
should now use eta and zeta: for example, what we now call emera was
formerly called imera; and this shows the meaning of the word to
have been 'the desired one coming after night,' and not, as is often
supposed, 'that which makes things gentle' (emera). So again, zugon is
duogon, quasi desis duein eis agogen--(the binding of two together for
the purpose of drawing.) Deon, as ordinarily written, has an evil sense,
signifying the chain (desmos) or hindrance of motion; but in its ancient
form dion is expressive of good, quasi diion, that which penetrates
or goes through all. Zemiodes is really demiodes, and means that which
binds motion (dounti to ion): edone is e pros ten onrsin teinousa
praxis--the delta is an insertion: lupe is derived apo tes dialuseos tou
somatos: ania is from alpha and 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 is properly erpnon,
because the sensation of pleasure is likened to a breath (pnoe) which
creeps (erpei) through the soul: euphrosune is named from pheresthai,
because the soul moves in harmony with nature: epithumia is e epi ton
thumon iousa dunamis: thumos is apo tes thuseos tes psuches: imeros--oti
eimenos pei e psuche: pothos, the desire which is in another place,
allothi pou: eros was anciently esros, and so called because it flows
into (esrei) the soul from without: doxa is e dioxis tou eidenai, or
expresses the shooting from a bow (toxon). The latter etymology is
confirmed by the words boulesthai, boule, aboulia, which all have to do
with shooting (bole): and similarly oiesis is nothing but the movement
(oisis) of the soul towards essence. Ekousion is to eikon--the
yielding--anagke is e an agke iousa, the passage through ravines which
impede motion: aletheia is theia ale, divine motion. Pseudos is the
opposite of this, implying the principle of constraint and forced
repose, which is expressed under the figure of sleep, to eudon; the psi
is an addition. Onoma, a name, affirms the real existence of that which
is sought after--on ou masma estin. On and ousia are only ion with 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--they may be of
foreign origin; and possibly this is the true answer. But mere antiquity
may often prevent our recognizing words, after all the complications
which they have undergone; and we must remember that however far we
carry back our analysis some ultimate elements or roots will remain
which can be no further analyzed. For example; the word agathos was
supposed by us to be a compound 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 may fairly conclude that we have reached
one of these original elements, and the truth of such a word must be
tested by some new method. Will you help me in the search?
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? Should we not use signs,
like the deaf and dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean
lightness--heaviness would be expressed by letting them drop. The
running of any animal would be described by a similar movement of our
own frames. 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 which they are composed. 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 knows how to use either a single colour, or a
combination of colours. And like the painter, we may apply letters to
the expression of objects, and form them into syllables; and these
again into words, until the picture or figure--that is, 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 secondary
elements are rightly given. I may remark, as I was saying about the
Gods, that we can only attain to conjecture of them. But still we insist
that ours is the true and only method of discovery; otherwise we must
have recourse, like the tragic poets, to a Deus ex machina, and say
that God gave the first names, and therefore they are right; or that the
barbarians are older than we are, and that we learnt of them; or that
antiquity has cast a veil over the truth. Yet all these are not reasons;
they are only ingenious excuses for having no reasons.
I will freely impart to you my own notions, though they are somewhat
crude:--the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument which
the legislator has employed to express all motion or kinesis. (I ought
to explain that kinesis is just iesis (going), for the letter eta was
unknown to the ancients; and the root, kiein, is a foreign form of
ienai: of kinesis or eisis, the opposite is stasis). This use of rho is
evident in the words tremble, break, crush, crumble, and the like;
the imposer of names perceived that the tongue is most agitated in the
pronunciation of this letter, just as he 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, are employed in the imitation
of such notions as shivering, seething, shaking, and in general of what
is windy. The letters delta and tau convey the idea of binding and rest
in a place: the lambda denotes smoothness, as in the words slip, sleek,
sleep, and the like. But when the slipping tongue is detained by the
heavier sound of gamma, then arises the notion of a glutinous clammy
nature: nu is sounded from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha
is the expression of size; eta of length; omicron of roundness, and
therefore there is plenty of omicron in the word goggulon. That is my
view, Hermogenes, of the correctness of names; and I should like to hear
what Cratylus would say. 'But, Socrates, as I was telling you, Cratylus
mystifies me; I should like to ask him, in your presence, what he means
by the fitness of names?' To this appeal, Cratylus replies 'that he
cannot explain so important a subject all in a moment.' 'No, but you may
"add little to little," as Hesiod says.' Socrates here interposes
his own request, that Cratylus will give some account of his theory.
Hermogenes and himself are mere sciolists, but Cratylus has reflected
on these matters, and has had teachers. Cratylus replies in the words of
Achilles: '"Illustrious Ajax, you have spoken in all things much to my
mind," whether Euthyphro, or some Muse inhabiting your own breast,
was the inspirer.' Socrates replies, that he is afraid of being
self-deceived, and therefore he must 'look fore and aft,' as Homer
remarks. Does not Cratylus agree with him that names teach us the nature
of things? 'Yes.' And naming is an art, and the artists are legislators,
and like artists in general, some of them are better and some of them
are worse than others, and give better or worse laws, and make better or
worse names. Cratylus cannot admit that one name is better than another;
they are either true names, or they are not names at all; and when he is
asked about the name of Hermogenes, who is acknowledged to have no
luck in him, he affirms this to be the name of somebody else. Socrates
supposes him to mean that falsehood is impossible, to which his own
answer would be, that there has never been a lack of liars. Cratylus
presses him with the old sophistical argument, that falsehood is saying
that which is not, and therefore saying nothing;--you cannot utter the
word which is not. Socrates complains that this argument is too subtle
for an old man to understand: Suppose a person addressing Cratylus were
to say, Hail, Athenian Stranger, Hermogenes! would these words be true
or false? 'I should say that they would be mere unmeaning sounds, like
the hammering of a brass pot.' But you would acknowledge that names,
as well as pictures, are imitations, and also that pictures may give a
right or wrong representation of a man or woman:--why may not names
then equally give a representation true and right or false and wrong?
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 of sight,
and in the other to his sense of hearing;--may he not? 'Yes.' Then you
will admit that there is a right or a wrong assignment of names, and if
of names, then of verbs and nouns; and if of verbs and nouns, then
of the sentences which are made up of them; and comparing nouns to
pictures, you may give them all the appropriate sounds, or only some of
them. And as he who gives all the colours makes a good picture, and
he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but still a
picture; so he who gives all the sounds makes a good name, and he who
gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but a name still. The
artist of names, that is, the legislator, may be a good or he may be a
bad artist. 'Yes, Socrates, but the cases are not parallel; for if you
subtract or misplace a letter, the name ceases to be a name.' Socrates
admits that the number 10, if an unit is subtracted, would cease to
be 10, but denies that names are of this purely quantitative nature.
Suppose that there are two objects--Cratylus and the image 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
there will be two Cratyluses, and not merely Cratylus and the image of
Cratylus. But an image in fact always falls short in some degree of the
original, and if images are not exact counterparts, why should names
be? if they were, they would be the doubles of their originals, and
indistinguishable from them; and how ridiculous would this be! Cratylus
admits the truth of Socrates' remark. But then Socrates rejoins, he
should have the courage to acknowledge that letters may be wrongly
inserted in a noun, or a noun in a sentence; and yet the noun or the
sentence may retain a meaning. Better to admit this, that we may not be
punished like the traveller in Egina who goes about at night, and that
Truth herself may not say to us, 'Too late.' And, errors excepted, we
may still affirm that a name to be correct must have proper letters,
which bear a resemblance to the thing signified. I must remind you of
what Hermogenes and I were saying about the letter rho accent, which
was held to be expressive of motion and hardness, as lambda is of
smoothness;--and this you will admit to be their natural meaning. But
then, why do the Eritreans call 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 of expressing motion.
Well, then, there is the letter lambda; what business has this in a word
meaning hardness? 'Why, Socrates, I retort upon you, that we put in and
pull out letters at pleasure.' And the explanation of this is custom
or agreement: we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s and a
convention may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. How could
there be 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 is another poor thing; although I agree with you in
thinking that the most perfect form of language is found only where
there is a perfect correspondence of sound and meaning. But let me ask
you what is the use and force of names? 'The use of names, Socrates, is
to inform, and he who knows names knows things.' Do you mean that the
discovery of names is the same as the discovery of things? 'Yes.' But
do you not see that there is a degree of deception about names? He who
first gave names, gave them according to his conception, and that
may have been erroneous. 'But then, why, Socrates, is language so
consistent? all words have the same laws.' Mere consistency is no test
of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, there may 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
are words really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise
which signify rest as which signify motion? There is episteme, which
is connected with stasis, as mneme is with meno. Bebaion, again, is the
expression of station and position; istoria is clearly descriptive of
the stopping istanai of the stream; piston indicates the cessation of
motion; and there are many words having a bad sense, which are connected
with ideas of motion, such as sumphora, amartia, etc.: amathia, again,
might be explained, as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia as e
akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the bad names are framed on the same
principle as the good, and other examples might be given, which would
favour a theory of rest rather than of motion. 'Yes; but the greater
number of words express motion.' Are we to count them, Cratylus; and is
correctness of names to be determined by the voice of a majority?
Here is another point: we were saying that the legislator gives names;
and therefore we must suppose that he knows the things which he names:
but how can he have learnt things from names before there were any
names? 'I believe, Socrates, that some power more than human first gave
things their names, and that these were necessarily true names.' Then
how came the giver of names to contradict himself, and to make some
names expressive of rest, and others of motion? 'I do not suppose
that he did make them both.' Then which did he make--those which are
expressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion?...But if
some names are true and others false, we can only 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, as we have
several times admitted, are the images of things; and the higher
knowledge is of things, and is not to be derived from names; and though
I do not doubt that the inventors of language gave names, under the idea
that all things 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 us after them. For is there not a true beauty and
a true good, which is always beautiful and always good? Can the thing
beauty be vanishing away from us while the words are yet in our mouths?
And they could not be known by any one if they are always passing
away--for if they are always passing away, the observer has no
opportunity of observing their state. Whether the doctrine of the flux
or of the eternal nature be the truer, is hard to determine. But no man
of sense will put himself, or the education of his mind, in the power
of names: he will not condemn himself to be an unreal thing, nor will he
believe that everything is in a flux like the water in a leaky vessel,
or that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This doctrine
may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and
therefore I would have you reflect while you 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 to Heracleitus.' Then
another day, my friend, you shall give me a lesson. 'Very good,
Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study these things
yourself.'
*****
We may now consider (I) how far Plato in the Cratylus has discovered
the true principles of language, and then (II) proceed to compare modern
speculations respecting the origin and nature of language with the
anticipations of his genius.
I. (1) Plato is aware that language is not the work of chance; nor does
he deny that there is a natural fitness in names. He only insists that
this natural fitness shall be intelligibly explained. But he has no idea
that language is a natural organism. He would have heard with surprise
that languages are the common work of whole nations in a primitive or
semi-barbarous age. How, he would probably have argued, could men devoid
of art have contrived a structure of such complexity? No answer could
have been given to this question, either in ancient or in modern times,
until the nature of primitive antiquity had been thoroughly studied, and
the instincts of man had been shown to exist in greater force, when
his state approaches more nearly to that of children or animals. The
philosophers of the last century, after their manner, would have vainly
endeavoured to trace the process by which proper names were converted
into common, and would have shown how the last effort of abstraction
invented prepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved
that language must have had a divine origin, because in childhood,
while the organs are pliable, the intelligence is wanting, and when the
intelligence is able to frame conceptions, the organs are no longer able
to express them. Or, as others have said: Man is man because he has the
gift of speech; and he could not have invented that which he is. But
this would have been an 'argument too subtle' for Socrates, who rejects
the theological account of the origin of language 'as an excuse for not
giving a reason,' which he compares to the introduction of the 'Deus ex
machina' by the tragic poets when they have to solve a difficulty; thus
anticipating many modern controversies in which the primary agency
of the divine Being is confused with the secondary cause; and God is
assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a lacuna in human
knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)
Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art
enters into language. The creative power abating is supplemented by a
mechanical process. 'Languages are not made but grow,' but they are made
as well as grow; bursting into life like a plant or a flower, they
are also capable of being trained and improved and engrafted upon one
another. The change in them is effected in earlier ages by musical and
euphonic improvements, at a later stage by the influence of grammar
and logic, and by the poetical and literary use of words. They develope
rapidly in childhood, and when 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 language only begins when the
frame-work is complete. The savage or primitive man, in whom the natural
instinct is strongest, is also the greatest improver of the forms of
language. He is the poet or maker of words, as in civilised ages the
dialectician is the definer or distinguisher of them. The latter calls
the second world of abstract terms into existence, as the former has
created the picture sounds which represent natural objects or processes.
Poetry and philosophy--these two, are the two great formative principles
of language, when they have passed their first stage, of which, as
of the first invention of the arts in general, we only entertain
conjecture. And mythology is a link between them, connecting the visible
and invisible, until at length the sensuous 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, logic and grammar, sister
arts, preserve and enlarge the decaying instinct of language, 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 acquainted
with any language but Greek. Yet he has conceived very truly the
relation of Greek to foreign languages, which he is led to consider,
because he finds that many Greek words are incapable of explanation.
Allowing a good deal for accident, and also for the fancies of the
conditores linguae Graecae, there is an element of which he is unable to
give an account. These unintelligible words he supposes to be of foreign
origin, and to have been derived from a time when the 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 for the employment
of such a device, and remarks that in foreign words there is still
a principle of correctness, which applies equally both to Greeks and
barbarians.
(3) But the greater number of primary words do not admit of derivation
from foreign languages; they must be resolved into the letters out of
which they are composed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning.
The framers of language were aware of this; they observed that alpha was
adapted to express size; 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 insight into the nature of language. He does
not expressively distinguish between mere imitation and the symbolical
use of sound to express thought, but he recognises in the examples which
he gives both modes of imitation. Gesture is the mode which a deaf and
dumb person would take of indicating his meaning. And language is the
gesture of the tongue; in the use of the letter rho accent, to express
a rushing or roaring, or of omicron to express roundness, there is a
direct imitation; while in the use of the letter alpha to express size,
or of eta to express length, the imitation is symbolical. The use of
analogous or similar sounds, 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,
Plato makes a great step in the physiology of language. He was probably
the first who said that 'language is imitative sound,' which is the
greatest and deepest truth of philology; although he is not aware of the
laws of euphony and association by which imitation must be regulated.
He was probably also the first who made a distinction between simple and
compound words, a truth second only in importance to that which has just
been mentioned. His great insight in one direction curiously contrasts
with his blindness in another; for he appears to be wholly unaware
(compare his derivation of agathos from agastos and thoos) of the
difference between the root and termination. But we must recollect that
he was necessarily more ignorant than any schoolboy of Greek grammar,
and had no table of the inflexions of verbs and nouns before his eyes,
which might have suggested to him the distinction.
(4) Plato distinctly affirms that language is not truth, or 'philosophie
une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates has delighted himself with
discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly
satirising the pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in
words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be
gathered from his experiment. 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 been otherwise, who would learn of words
when he might learn of things? There is a great controversy and high
argument between Heracleiteans and Eleatics, but no man of sense would
commit his soul in such enquiries to the imposers of names...In this and
other passages Plato shows that he is as completely emancipated from the
influence of 'Idols of the tribe' as Bacon himself.
The lesson which may be gathered from words is not metaphysical or
moral, but historical. They teach us the affinity of races, they tell us
something about the association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the
memory of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about
right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom and necessity, or the other
problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on
such subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other
languages, and may have no relation to the contemporary state of thought
and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of
philosophical reflection; they have been commonly transferred from
matter to mind, and their meaning is the very reverse of their
etymology. Because there is or is not a name for a thing, we cannot
argue that the thing has or has not an actual existence; or that
the antitheses, parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have
anything corresponding to them in nature. There are too many words as
well as too few; and they generalize the objects or ideas which they
represent. The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of
language teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words
our servants, and not allowing them to be our masters.
Plato does not add the further observation, that the etymological
meaning of words is in process of being lost. If at first framed on
a principle of intelligibility, they would gradually cease to be
intelligible, like those of a foreign 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 'poor creature,'--convention. But he does not see that 'habit
and repute,' and their relation to other words, are always exercising
an influence over them. Words appear to be isolated, but they are really
the parts of an organism which is always being reproduced. They are
refined by civilization, harmonized by poetry, emphasized by literature,
technically applied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on
the border-ground of human knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from
individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every
lively-minded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of
millions, and yet are always imperceptibly changing;--not the inventors
of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great writers,
or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespear,
Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of
them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of their
own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage
gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an
old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. But these and
other subtleties of language escaped the observation of Plato. He is not
aware that the languages of the world are organic structures, and that
every word in them is related to every other; nor does he conceive of
language as the joint work of the speaker and the hearer, requiring in
man a faculty not only of expressing his thoughts but of understanding
those of others.
On the other hand, he cannot be justly charged with a desire to frame
language on artificial principles. Philosophers have sometimes dreamed
of a technical or scientific language, in words which should have
fixed meanings, and stand in the same relation to one another as the
substances which they denote. But there is no more trace of this in
Plato than there is of a language corresponding to the ideas; nor,
indeed, could the want of such a language be felt until the sciences
were far more developed. Those who would extend the use of technical
phraseology beyond the limits of science or of custom, seem to forget
that freedom and suggestiveness and the play of association are
essential characteristics of language. The great master has shown how
he regarded pedantic distinctions of words or attempts to confine their
meaning in the satire 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. 'The Eretrians say sklerotes for skleroter;' 'the Thessalians
call Apollo Amlos;' 'The Phrygians have the words pur, udor, kunes
slightly changed;' 'there is an old Homeric word emesato, meaning "he
contrived";' 'our forefathers, and especially the women, who are most
conservative of the ancient language, loved the letters iota and delta;
but now iota is changed into eta and epsilon, and delta into zeta;
this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.' Plato was
very 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 is induction applicable to philology in the same degree as to
most of the physical sciences. For after we have pushed our researches
to the furthest point, in language as in all the other creations of the
human mind, there will always remain an element of exception or accident
or free-will, which cannot be eliminated.
The question, 'whether falsehood is impossible,' which Socrates
characteristically sets aside as too subtle for an old man (compare
Euthyd.), could only have arisen in an age of imperfect consciousness,
which had not yet learned to distinguish words from things. Socrates
replies in effect that words have an independent existence; thus
anticipating the solution of the mediaeval controversy of Nominalism
and Realism. He is aware too that languages exist in various degrees
of perfection, and that the analysis of them can only be carried to a
certain point. 'If we could always, or almost always, use likenesses,
which are the appropriate expressions, that would be the most perfect
state of language.' These words suggest a question of deeper interest
than the origin of language; viz. what is the ideal of language, how
far by any correction of their usages existing languages might become
clearer and more expressive than they are, more poetical, and also more
logical; or whether they are now finally fixed and have received their
last impress from time and authority.
On the whole, the Cratylus seems to contain deeper truths about language
than any other ancient writing. But feeling the uncertain ground upon
which he is walking, and partly in order to preserve the character of
Socrates, Plato envelopes the whole subject in a robe of fancy, and
allows his principles to drop out as if by accident.
II. What is the result of recent speculations about the origin and
nature of language? Like other modern metaphysical enquiries, they end
at last in a statement of facts. But, in order to state or understand
the facts, a metaphysical insight seems to be required. There are
more things in language than the human mind easily conceives. And many
fallacies have to be dispelled, as well as observations made. The true
spirit of philosophy or metaphysics can alone charm away metaphysical
illusions, which are always reappearing, formerly in the fancies of
neoplatonist writers, now in the disguise of experience and common
sense. An analogy, a figure of speech, an intelligible theory, a
superficial observation of the individual, have often been mistaken for
a true account 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 a child in any language. Yet into the formation of
those words have entered causes which the human mind is not capable
of calculating. They are a drop or two 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 child himself, 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 the circle
of men's minds was narrower and their sympathies and instincts stronger;
in which their organs of speech were more flexible, and the sense of
hearing finer and more discerning; in which they lived more in company,
and after the manner of children were more given to express their
feelings; in which 'they moved all together,' like a herd of wild
animals, 'when they moved at all.' Among them, as in every society, a
particular person would be more sensitive and intelligent than the rest.
Suddenly, on some occasion of interest (at the approach of a wild beast,
shall we say?), he first, they following him, utter a cry which resounds
through the forest. The cry is almost or quite involuntary, and may be
an imitation of the roar of the animal. Thus far we have not speech,
but only the inarticulate expression of feeling or emotion in no respect
differing from the cries of animals; for they too call to one another
and are answered. But now suppose that some one at a distance not only
hears the sound, but apprehends the meaning: or we may imagine that
the cry is repeated to a member of the society who had been absent; the
others act the scene over again when he returns home in the evening. And
so the cry becomes a word. The hearer in turn gives back the 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,
he repeats the same cry again, and again he is answered; he tries
experiments with a like result, and the speaker and the hearer rejoice
together in their newly-discovered faculty. At first there would be few
such cries, and little danger of mistaking or confusing them. For the
mind of primitive man had a narrow range of perceptions and feelings;
his senses were microscopic; twenty or thirty sounds or gestures would
be enough for him, nor would he have any difficulty in finding them.
Naturally he broke out into speech--like the young infant he laughed
and babbled; but not until there were hearers as well as speakers did
language begin. Not the interjection or the vocal imitation of the
object, but the interjection or the vocal imitation of the object
understood, 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 the chase, which are excited by his appearance. In the moment of
hearing the sound, without any appreciable interval, these and other
latent experiences wake up in the mind of the hearer. Not only does he
receive an impression, but he brings previous knowledge to bear upon
that impression. Necessarily the pictorial image becomes less vivid,
while the association of the nature and habits of the animal is more
distinctly perceived. The picture passes into a symbol, for there would
be too many of them and they would crowd the mind; the vocal imitation,
too, is always in process of being lost and being renewed, just as the
picture is brought back again in the description of the poet. Words now
can be used more freely because there are more of them. What was once an
involuntary 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 they can even play with them. The word is separated both from
the object and from the mind; and slowly nations and individuals attain
to a fuller consciousness of themselves.
Parallel with this mental process the articulation of sounds is
gradually becoming perfected. The finer sense detects the differences of
them, and begins, first to agglomerate, then to distinguish them. Times,
persons, places, relations of all kinds, are expressed by modifications
of them. The earliest parts of speech, as we may call them by
anticipation, like the first utterances of children, probably partook
of the nature of interjections and nouns; then came verbs; at length the
whole sentence appeared, and rhythm and metre followed. Each stage in
the progress of language was accompanied by some corresponding stage
in the mind and civilisation of man. In time, when the family became a
nation, the wild growth of dialects passed into a language. Then arose
poetry and literature. We can hardly realize to ourselves how much with
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 or analogical word was refined into a notion; how language,
fair and large and free, 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 the perfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying
that this or any other theory of language is proved by facts. It is
not difficult to form an hypothesis which by a series of imaginary
transitions will bridge over the chasm which separates man from the
animals. Differences of kind may often be thus resolved into differences
of degree. But we must not assume that we have in this way discovered
the true account of them. Through what struggles the harmonious use
of the organs of speech was acquired; to what extent the conditions of
human life were different; how far the genius of individuals may have
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 the tongue, and the expression of a movement stirring the
hearts not of one man only but of many, 'as the trees of the wood are
stirred by the wind.' The theory is consistent or not inconsistent with
our own mental experience, and throws some degree of light upon a dark
corner of the human mind.
In the later analysis of language, we trace the opposite and contrasted
elements of the individual and nation, of the past and present, of
the inward and outward, of the subject and object, of the notional
and relational, of the root or unchanging part of the word and of the
changing inflexion, if such a distinction be admitted, of the vowel and
the consonant, of quantity and accent, of speech and writing, of poetry
and prose. We observe also the reciprocal influence of sounds and
conceptions on each other, like the connexion of body and mind; and
further remark that although the names of objects were originally proper
names, as the grammarian or logician might call them, yet at a later
stage they become universal notions, which combine into particulars and
individuals, and are taken out of the first rude agglomeration of sounds
that they may be replaced in a higher and more logical order. We see
that in the simplest sentences are contained grammar and logic--the
parts of speech, the Eleatic philosophy and the Kantian categories. So
complex is language, and so expressive not only of the meanest wants of
man, but of his highest 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 are always slowly moving, half dead, half alive,
half solid, half fluid; the breath of a moment, yet like the air,
continuous in all ages and countries,--like the glacier, too, containing
within them a trickling stream which deposits debris of the rocks over
which it passes. There were happy moments, as we may conjecture, in the
lives of nations, at which they came to the birth--as in the golden age
of literature, the man and the time seem to conspire; the eloquence of
the bard or chief, as in later times the creations of the great writer
who is the expression of his age, became impressed on the minds of
their countrymen, perhaps in the hour of some crisis of national
development--a migration, a conquest, or the like. The picture of the
word which was beginning to be lost, is now revived; the sound again
echoes to the sense; men find themselves capable not only of expressing
more feelings, and describing more objects, but of expressing and
describing them better. The world before the flood, 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 of it, though
imperfect and uncertain, is gained from the analogy of causes still in
action, some powerful and sudden, others working slowly in the course of
infinite ages. Something too may be allowed to 'the persistency of the
strongest,' to 'the survival of the fittest,' in this as in the other
realms of nature.
These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of
language suggests to us about the powers of the human mind and the
forces and influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate
sounds were inspired. Yet in making these and similar generalizations
we may note also dangers to which we are exposed. (1) There is the
confusion of ideas with facts--of mere possibilities, and generalities,
and modes of conception with actual and definite knowledge. The words
'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,' development,' 'instinct,' 'implicit,'
'explicit,' and the like, have a false clearness or comprehensiveness,
which adds nothing to our knowledge. The metaphor of a flower or a tree,
or some other work of nature or art, is often in like manner only a
pleasing picture. (2) There is the fallacy of resolving the languages
which we know into their parts, and then imagining that we can discover
the nature of language by reconstructing them. (3) There is the danger
of identifying language, not with thoughts but with ideas. (4) There is
the error of supposing that the analysis of grammar and logic has always
existed, or that their distinctions were familiar to Socrates and Plato.
(5) There is the fallacy of exaggerating, and also of diminishing the
interval which separates articulate from inarticulate language--the
cries of animals from the 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 of man--of interpreting the past by the present,
and of substituting the definite and intelligible for the true but dim
outline which is the horizon of human knowledge.
The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We
have the analogy of the cries of animals, of the songs of birds ('man,
like the nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up thoughts
with musical notes'), of music, of children learning to speak, of
barbarous nations in which the linguistic instinct is still undecayed,
of ourselves learning to think and speak a new language, of the deaf and
dumb who have words without sounds, of the various disorders of speech;
and we have the after-growth of mythology, which, like language, is an
unconscious creation of the human mind. We can observe the social and
collective instincts of animals, and may remark how, when domesticated,
they have the power of understanding but not of speaking, while on the
other hand, some birds which are comparatively devoid of intelligence,
make a nearer approach to articulate speech. We may note how in the
animals there is a want of that sympathy with one another which appears
to be the soul of language. We can compare the use of speech with other
mental and bodily operations; for speech too is a kind of gesture, and
in the child or savage accompanied with gesture. We may observe that
the child learns to speak, as he learns to walk or to eat, by a natural
impulse; yet in either case not without a power of imitation which
is also natural to him--he is taught to read, but he breaks forth
spontaneously in speech. We can trace the impulse to bind together the
world in ideas beginning in the first efforts to speak and culminating
in philosophy. But there remains an element which cannot be explained,
or even adequately described. We can understand how man creates or
constructs consciously and by design; and see, if we do not understand,
how nature, by a law, calls into being an organised structure. But the
intermediate organism which stands between man and nature, which is the
work of mind yet unconscious, and in which mind and matter seem to meet,
and mind unperceived to herself is really limited by all other minds, is
neither understood nor seen by us, and is with reluctance admitted to be
a fact.
Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the
transfiguration of the 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 the individual, and yet having
a sort of eternal or universal nature. When we analyze our own mental
processes, we find words everywhere in every degree of clearness and
consistency, fading away in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly
succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greater
distinctness and consecutiveness in speech, and a greater still
in writing, taking the place of one another when we try to become
emancipated from their influence. For in all processes of the mind which
are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the attempt to think without
words is a mere illusion,--they are always reappearing when we fix our
thoughts. And speech is not a separate faculty, but the expression of
all our faculties, to which all our other powers of expression, signs,
looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrument is 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 their actions as links in a chain of causes and effects going back to
the beginning of time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their own
individuality in the universal cause or nature. In like manner we might
think of the words which we daily use, as derived from the first speech
of man, and of all the languages in the world, as the expressions or
varieties of a single force or life of language of which the thoughts
of men are the accident. Such a conception enables us to grasp the
power and wonder of languages, and is very natural to the scientific
philologist. For he, like the metaphysician, believes in the reality of
that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormous influence
which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like fixed
ideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations we
attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little
of an effect,--too much of an absolute, too little of a relative
character,--too much of an ideal, too little of a matter-of-fact
existence.
Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which all
existent languages may be supposed to be the perversion. But we must
not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or
is anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely
various phenomena. There is no abstract language 'in rerum natura,'
any more than there is an abstract tree, but only languages in various
stages of growth, maturity, and decay. Nor do other logical distinctions
or even grammatical exactly correspond to the facts of language; for
they too are attempts to give unity and regularity to a subject which is
partly irregular.
We find, however, that there are distinctions of another kind by which
this vast field of language admits of being mapped out. There is the
distinction between biliteral and triliteral roots, and the various
inflexions which accompany them; between the mere mechanical cohesion of
sounds or words, and the 'chemical' combination of them into a new word;
there is the distinction between languages which have had a free and
full development of their organisms, and languages which have been
stunted in their growth,--lamed in their hands or feet, and never able
to acquire afterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there
is the distinction between synthetical languages like Greek and Latin,
which have retained their inflexions, and analytical languages like
English or French, which have lost them. Innumerable as are the
languages and dialects of mankind, there are comparatively few classes
to which they can be referred.
Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech.
The organs of language are the same in all mankind, and are only capable
of uttering 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. The elements of all speech, like the elements of
the musical scale, are few and simple, though admitting of infinite
gradations and combinations. Whatever slight differences exist in the
use or formation of these organs, owing to climate or the sense of
euphony or other causes, they are as nothing compared with their
agreement. Here then is a real basis of unity in the study of philology,
unlike that imaginary abstract unity of which we were just now speaking.
Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical,
or physiological point of view, the materials of our knowledge are
inexhaustible. The comparisons of children learning to speak, of
barbarous nations, of musical notes, of the cries of animals, of the
song of birds, increase our insight into the nature of human speech.
Many observations which would otherwise have escaped us are suggested by
them. But they do not explain why, in man and in man only, the speaker
met with a response from the hearer, and the half articulate sound
gradually developed into Sanscrit and Greek. They hardly enable 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
and death, or of animal life,--remains inviolable. That problem is
indissolubly bound up with the origin of man; and if we ever know
more of the one, we may expect to know more of the other. (Compare W.
Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M.
Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in
die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft.')
*****
It is more than sixteen years since the preceding remarks were written,
which with a few alterations have now been reprinted. During the
interval the progress of philology has been very great. More languages
have been compared; the inner structure of language has been laid bare;
the relations of sounds have been more accurately discriminated; the
manner in which dialects affect or are affected by the literary or
principal form of a language is better understood. Many merely verbal
questions have been eliminated; the remains of the old traditional
methods have died away. The study has passed from the metaphysical into
an historical stage. Grammar is no longer confused with language, nor
the anatomy of words and sentences with their life and use. Figures of
speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed, have been
stripped off; and we see language more as it truly was. The immensity
of the 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 the distance. For languages have a natural but not a perfect
growth; like other creations of nature into which the will of man
enters, they are full of what we term accident and irregularity. And
the difficulties of the subject become not less, but greater, as we
proceed--it is one of those studies in which we seem to know less as we
know more; partly because we are no longer satisfied with the vague and
superficial ideas of it which prevailed fifty years ago; partly also
because the remains of the languages with which we are acquainted always
were, and if they are still living, are, in a state of transition; and
thirdly, because there are lacunae in our knowledge of them which can
never be filled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of them has been
preserved. Yet the materials at our disposal are far greater than any
individual can use. Such are a few of the general reflections which the
present state of philology calls up.
(1) Language seems to be composite, but into its first elements the
philologer has never been able to penetrate. However far he goes back,
he never arrives at the 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 language into their parts he will
arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merely analyzing what never
existed, or is never known to have existed, except in a composite form.
He may divide nouns and verbs into roots and inflexions, but he has 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 of pronouns. To say that 'pronouns, like ripe fruit, dropped out of
verbs,' is a misleading figure of speech. Although all languages have
some common principles, there is no primitive form or forms of language
known to us, or to be reasonably imagined, from which they are all
descended. No inference can be drawn from language, either for or
against the unity of the human race. Nor is there any proof that words
were ever used without any relation to each other. Whatever may be the
meaning of a sentence or a word when applied to primitive language, it
is probable that the sentence is more akin to the original form than
the word, and that the later stage of language is the result rather of
analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination of the two.
Nor, again, are we sure that the original process of learning to speak
was the same in different places or among different races of men. It may
have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes may have
used shorter, others longer words or cries: they may have been more
or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have
modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the
lengthening and strengthening of vowels or by the shortening and
weakening of them, by the condensation or rarefaction of consonants.
But who gave to language these primeval laws; or why one race has
triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members of a group
of languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languages
resemble 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 of consonants, and the like--are questions of which we only
'entertain conjecture.' We must remember the length of time that has
elapsed since man first walked upon the earth, and that in this vast
but unknown period every variety of language may have been in process of
formation and decay, many times over.
(Compare Plato, Laws):--
'ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin of
government? Will not a man be able to judge best from a point of view in
which he 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 of time, 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
has elapsed since cities first existed and men were citizens of them?
CLEINIAS: Hardly.
ATHENIAN STRANGER: But you are quite sure that it must be vast and
incalculable?
CLEINIAS: No doubt.
ATHENIAN STRANGER: And have there not been thousands and thousands of
cities which have come into being and perished during this period? And
has not every place had endless forms of government, and been sometimes
rising, and at other times falling, and again improving or waning?'
Aristot. Metaph.:--
'And if a person should conceive the tales of mythology to mean only
that men thought the gods to be the first essences of things, he would
deem the reflection to have been inspired and would consider that,
whereas probably every art and part of wisdom had been DISCOVERED AND
LOST MANY TIMES OVER, such notions 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
still survive, any more than of the first huts or buildings which were
constructed by man. Nor are we at all certain of the relation, if any,
in which the greater families of languages stand to each other. The
influence of individuals must always have been a disturbing element.
Like great writers in later times, there may have been many a barbaric
genius who taught the men of his tribe to sing or speak, showing them by
example how to continue or divide their words, charming their souls
with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objects the
expression of their confused fancies--to whom the whole of language
might in truth be said to be a figure of speech. One person may have
introduced a new custom into the formation or pronunciation of a word;
he may have been imitated by others, and the custom, or form, or accent,
or quantity, or rhyme which he introduced in a single word may have
become the type on which many other words or inflexions of words were
framed, and may have quickly ran through a whole language. For like the
other gifts which nature has bestowed upon man, that of speech has been
conveyed to him through the medium, not of the many, but of the few, who
were his 'law-givers'--'the legislator with the dialectician standing
on his right hand,' in Plato's striking image, who formed the manners
of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and behaviour, whose
gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively imitated by
them,--the 'king of men' who was their priest, almost their God...But
these are conjectures only: so little do we know of the origin of
language that the real scholar is indisposed to touch the subject at
all.
(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or
original language which it is time to leave behind us. We no longer
divide languages into synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity
of structure to be the safe or only guide to the affinities of them. We
do not confuse the parts of speech with the categories of Logic. Nor do
we conceive languages any more than civilisations 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 the human frame, as in the
state, there is a principle of renovation as well as of decay which is
at work in all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by
the wit of man. With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words
newly imported from a foreign language, and the like, in which art has
imitated nature, 'words are not made but grow.' Nor do we attribute to
them a supernatural origin. The law which regulates them is like the law
which governs the circulation of the blood, or the rising of the sap in
trees; the action of it is uniform, but the result, which appears in the
superficial forms of men and animals or in the leaves of trees, is an
endless profusion and variety. The laws of vegetation are invariable,
but no two plants, no two leaves of the forest are precisely the same.
The laws of language are invariable, but no two languages are alike, no
two words have exactly the same meaning. No two sounds are exactly of
the same quality, or give precisely the same impression.
It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other
points which appear to be still in dispute. Is language conscious or
unconscious? In speaking or writing have we present to our minds the
meaning or the sound or the construction of the words which we are
using?--No more than the separate drops of water with which we quench
our thirst are present: the whole draught 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 other natural operations, the
process of speech, when most perfect, is least observed by us. We do
not pause at each mouthful to dwell upon the taste of it: nor has the
speaker time to ask himself the comparative merits of different modes of
expression while he is uttering them. There are many things in the use
of language which may be observed from without, but which cannot be
explained from within. Consciousness carries us but a little way in
the investigation of the mind; it is not the faculty of internal
observation, but only the dim light which makes such observation
possible. What is supposed to be our consciousness of language is
really only the analysis of it, and this analysis admits of innumerable
degrees. But would it not be better if this term, which is so
misleading, and yet has played so great a part in mental science, were
either banished or used only with the distinct meaning of 'attention
to our own minds,' such as is called forth, not by familiar mental
processes, but by the interruption of them? Now in this sense we may
truly say that we are not conscious of ordinary speech, though we are
commonly roused to attention by the misuse or mispronunciation of a
word. Still less, even in schools and academies, do we ever attempt
to invent new words or to alter the meaning of old ones, except in
the case, mentioned above, of technical or borrowed words which are
artificially made or imported because a need of them is felt. Neither in
our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of reflection in
man contributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of language.
'Which of us by taking thought' can make new words or constructions?
Reflection is the least of the causes by which language is affected,
and is likely to have the least power, when the linguistic instinct is
greatest, as in young children and in the infancy of nations.
A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental
element of language; they are really inseparable--no definite line can
be drawn between them, any more than in any other common act of mind
and body. It is true that within certain limits we possess the power of
varying sounds by opening and closing the mouth, by touching the palate
or the teeth with the tongue, by lengthening or shortening the vocal
instrument, by greater or less stress, by a higher or lower pitch of the
voice, and we can substitute one note or accent for another. But behind
the organs of speech and their action there remains the informing mind,
which sets them in motion and works together with them. And behind the
great structure of human speech and the lesser varieties of 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 order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its
infinitesimal minuteness--both equally inscrutable to us. We need no
longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural or
the Mental sciences, if we 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 only be known through the outward.
Neither need we raise the question whether the laws of language, like
the other laws of human action, admit of exceptions. The answer 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 do not therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The comparison of the
growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly
discarded, for nations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in
the other political sciences, we must distinguish between collective
and individual actions or processes, and not attribute to the one
what belongs to the other. Again, when we speak of the hereditary or
paternity of a language, we must remember that the parents are alive
as well as the children, and that all the preceding generations survive
(after a manner) in the latest form of it. And when, for the purposes of
comparison, we form into groups the roots or terminations of words, we
should not forget how casual is the manner in which their resemblances
have arisen--they were not first written down by a grammarian in the
paradigms of a grammar and learned out of a book, but were due to many
chance attractions of sound or of meaning, or of both combined. So many
cautions 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 be well 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), and the like, which are always interesting, but are
apt to be delusive. Yet such figures of speech are far nearer the truth
than the theories which attribute the invention and improvement of
language to the conscious action of the human mind...Lastly, it is
doubted by recent philologians whether climate can be supposed to have
exercised any influence worth speaking of on a language: such a 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 sciences which are
concerned with animal and vegetable life. And a Darwinian school of
philologists has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words
in the place of things. It seems to be true, that whether applied to
language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless
very precisely defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the
natural selection' of words or meanings of words or by the 'persistence
and survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends
to affirm nothing more than this--that the word 'fittest to survive'
survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. But if he means
that the word or the meaning of the word or some portion of the word
which comes into use or drops out of use is selected or rejected on the
ground of economy or 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 a proposition which has several senses,
and in none of these senses can be assisted to be uniformly true. For
the laws of language are precarious, and can only act uniformly when
there is such frequency of intercourse among neighbours as is sufficient
to enforce them. And there are many reasons why a man should prefer his
own way of speaking to that of others, unless by so doing he becomes
unintelligible. The struggle for existence among words is not of that
fierce and irresistible kind in which birds, beasts and fishes devour
one another, but of a milder sort, allowing one usage to be substituted
for another, not by force, 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 rather to obscure than explain the
subject to which it has been applied. Nor in any case can the struggle
for existence be deemed to be the sole or principal cause of changes
in language, but only one among many, and one of which we cannot easily
measure the importance. There is a further objection which may be urged
equally against all applications of the Darwinian theory. As in animal
life and likewise in vegetable, so in languages, the process of change
is said to be insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed to pass
into one another by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the
newly-created forms soon become fixed; there are few if any vestiges of
the intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the
change is wanting.
(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many
of the rules and traditions of grammar, whether ancient grammar or the
corrections of it which modern philology has introduced. Grammar, like
law, delights in definition: human speech, like human action, though
very far from being a mere chaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and
is always in a state of change or transition. Grammar gives an erroneous
conception of language: for it reduces to a system that which is not a
system. Its figures of speech, pleonasms, ellipses, anacolutha, pros
to semainomenon, and the like have no reality; they do not either make
conscious expressions more intelligible or show the way in which they
have arisen; they are chiefly designed to bring an earlier use of
language into conformity with the later. Often they seem intended only
to remind us that great poets like Aeschylus or Sophocles or Pindar or
a great prose writer like Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable
liberties with grammatical rules; it appears never to have occurred to
the inventors of them that these real 'conditores linguae Graecae' lived
in an age before grammar, when 'Greece also was living Greece.' It is
the anatomy, not the physiology of language, which grammar seeks to
describe: into the idiom and higher life of words it does not enter. The
ordinary Greek grammar gives a complete paradigm of the verb, without
suggesting that the double or treble forms of Perfects, Aorists, etc.
are hardly ever contemporaneous. It distinguishes Moods and Tenses,
without observing how much of the nature of one passes into the other.
It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and Middle, but takes no notice
of the precarious existence and uncertain character of the last of the
three. Language is a thing of degrees and relations and associations
and exceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed rules. Language has many
varieties of usage: grammar tries to reduce them to a single one.
Grammar divides verbs into regular and irregular: it does not recognize
that the irregular, equally with the regular, are subject to law, and
that a language which had no exceptions would not be a natural growth:
for it could not have been subjected to the influences by which language
is ordinarily affected. It is always wanting to describe ancient
languages in the terms of a modern one. It has a favourite fiction that
one word is put in the place of another; the truth is that no word
is 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 has ceased to be observed. The common explanation of kata or
some other preposition 'being understood' in a Greek sentence is another
fiction of the same kind, which tends to disguise the fact that under
cases were comprehended originally many more relations, and that
prepositions are used only to define the meaning of them with greater
precision. These instances are sufficient to show the sort of errors
which grammar introduces into language. We are not considering the
question of its utility to the beginner in the study. Even to him the
best grammar is the shortest and that in which he will have least to
unlearn. It may be said that the explanations here referred to are
already out of date, and that the study of Greek grammar has received a
new character from comparative philology. This is true; but it is also
true that the traditional grammar has still a great hold on the mind of
the student.
Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar,
because they wear the appearance of philosophy and there is no test to
which they can be subjected. They are useful in so far as they give us
an insight into the history of the human mind and the modes of thought
which have existed in former ages; or in so far as they furnish wider
conceptions of the different branches of knowledge and of their relation
to one another. But they are worse than useless when they outrun
experience and abstract the mind from the observation of facts, only to
envelope it in a mist of words. Some philologers, like Schleicher, have
been greatly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel; nearly all of them
to a certain extent have fallen under the dominion of physical science.
Even Kant himself thought that the first principles of philosophy
could be elicited from the analysis of the proposition, in this respect
falling short of Plato. Westphal holds that there are three stages of
language: (1) in which things were characterized independently, (2)
in which they were regarded in relation to human thought, and (3) in
relation to one another. But are not such distinctions an anachronism?
for they imply a growth of abstract ideas which never existed in early
times. Language cannot be explained by Metaphysics; for it is prior to
them and much more nearly allied to sense. It is not likely that the
meaning of the cases is ultimately resolvable into relations of space
and time. Nor can we suppose the conception of cause and effect or
of the finite and infinite or of the same and other to be latent in
language at a time when in their abstract form they had never entered
into the mind of man...If the science of Comparative Philology had
possessed 'enough of Metaphysics to get rid of Metaphysics,' it would
have made far greater progress.
(4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are
fully developed. They are of several patterns; and these become altered
by admixture in various degrees,--they may only borrow a few words from
one another and retain their life comparatively unaltered, or they may
meet in a struggle for existence until one of the two is overpowered
and retires from the field. They attain the full rights and dignity of
language when they acquire the use of writing and have a literature of
their own; they pass into dialects and grow out of them, in proportion
as men are isolated or united by locality or occupation. The common
language sometimes reacts upon the dialects and imparts to them also a
literary character. The laws of language can be best discerned in the
great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient to
modern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the
silent notes of the world's history; they mark periods of unknown length
in which war and conquest were running riot over whole continents, times
of suffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the
masters became subjects and the subject races masters, in which driven
by necessity or impelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their
original homes and but slowly found a resting-place. Language would be
the greatest of all historical monuments, if it could only tell us the
history of itself.
(5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The
simplest of all is to observe our own use of language in conversation
or in writing, how we put words together, how we construct and connect
sentences, what are the rules of 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 which we are ourselves
most liable of spelling or pronunciation. We may compare with our 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 the grand difference between ancient and modern European
languages. In the child learning to speak we may note the inherent
strength of language, which like 'a mountain river' is always forcing
its way out. We may witness the delight in imitation and repetition,
and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We may learn
something also from the falterings of old age, the searching for words,
and the confusion of them with one another, the forgetfulness of
proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more
isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to
be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great
cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and
crime, so pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect
articulation of the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals,
from the analysis of sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The
phonograph affords a visible evidence of the nature and divisions of
sound; we may be truly said to know what we can manufacture. Artificial
languages, such as that of Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing
what language is not. The study of any foreign language may be made also
a study of Comparative Philology. There are several points, such as
the nature of irregular verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, the
influence 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 any other. A few well-selected questions may lead the student at
once into the heart of the mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and
the verb of existence generally more irregular than any other parts of
speech? Why is the number of words so small in which the sound is an
echo of the sense? Why does the meaning of words depart so widely from
their etymology? Why do substantives often differ in meaning from the
verbs to which they are related, adverbs from adjectives? Why do words
differing in origin coalesce in the same sound though retaining their
differences of meaning? Why are some verbs impersonal? Why are there
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
different points of view into the true nature of language.
(6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the
false appearances in which grammar and philology, or the love of system
generally, have clothed it. We have also sought to indicate the sources
of our knowledge of it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we
may now proceed to consider some of the principles or natural laws which
have created or modified it.
i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common
also to the animals, is imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the
solitude of the forest: 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 the secret place in which he is hiding himself;
he remembers and repeats the sound which he has heard. The love of
imitation becomes a passion and an instinct to him. Primitive men learnt
to speak from one another, like a child from its mother 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 human
thoughts and feelings. We may still remark how much greater and more
natural the exercise of the power is in the use of language than in any
other process or 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 or thousands
of years the imitative or half-articulate stage continued there is no
possibility of determining. But we may reasonably conjecture that there
was a time when the vocal utterance of man was intermediate between
what we now call language and the cry of a bird or animal. Speech before
language was a rudis indigestaque materies, not yet distributed into
words and sentences, in which the cry of fear or joy mingled with more
definite sounds recognized by custom as the expressions of things or
events. It was the principle of analogy which introduced into this
'indigesta moles' order and measure. It was Anaxagoras' omou panta
chremata, eita nous elthon diekosmese: the light of reason lighted up
all things and at once began to arrange them. In every sentence, in
every word and every termination of a word, this power of forming
relations to one another was contained. There was a proportion of sound
to sound, of meaning to meaning, of meaning to sound. The cases and
numbers of nouns, the persons, tenses, numbers of verbs, were generally
on the same or nearly the same pattern and had the same meaning. The
sounds by which they were expressed were rough-hewn at first; after
a while they grew more refined--the natural laws of euphony began to
affect them. The rules of syntax 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 of proportion. As in things of
beauty, as in all nature, in the composition as well as in the motion
of all things, there is a similarity of relations by which they are held
together.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the analogies of language are
always uniform: there may be often a choice between several, and
sometimes one and sometimes 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 of the verb is often made
up of both. The same nouns may be partly declinable and partly
indeclinable, and in some of their cases may have fallen out of use.
Here are rules with exceptions; they are not however really exceptions,
but contain in themselves indications of other rules. Many of these
interruptions or variations of analogy occur in pronouns or in the verb
of existence of which the forms were too common and therefore too deeply
imbedded in language entirely to drop out. The same verbs in the same
meaning may sometimes take one case, sometimes another. The participle
may also have the character of an adjective, the adverb either of an
adjective or of a preposition. These exceptions are as regular as the
rules, but the causes of them are seldom known to us.
Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere
intersected by the lines of analogy. Like number from which it seems to
be derived, the principle of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern
the similarities and differences of things, and their relations to one
another. At first these are such as lie on the surface only; after
a time they are seen by men to reach farther down into the nature of
things. Gradually in language they arrange themselves into a sort of
imperfect system; groups of personal and case endings are placed side by
side. The fertility of language produces many more than are wanted;
and the superfluous ones are utilized by the assignment to them of new
meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially compensated
by each other. It must be remembered that in all the languages which
have a literature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, we are not at
the beginning but almost at the end of the linguistic process; we have
reached a time when the verb and the noun are nearly perfected, though
in no language did they completely perfect themselves, because for some
unknown reason the motive powers of languages seem to have ceased when
they were on the eve of completion: they became fixed or crystallized in
an imperfect form either from the influence of writing and literature,
or because no further differentiation of them was required for the
intelligibility of language. So not without admixture and confusion and
displacement and contamination of sounds and the meanings of words, a
lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no
further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails
in all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question;
or no other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which,
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 noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of
being understood,--much less articulation would suffice for this; nor
(c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds.
Such notions were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive
man. We may speak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest,
easiest, most euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of
two competing sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our
knowledge. We may try to grasp the infinity of language either under
the figure of a limitless plain divided into countries and districts by
natural boundaries, or of a vast river eternally flowing whose origin is
concealed from us; we may apprehend partially the laws by which speech
is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if we should 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
to be distributed over the earth.
iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even
prior to it comes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of
analogy or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number
of words it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of
language is it entirely 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 a sense of harmony it became a barbarism which
disturbed the flow and equilibrium of discourse; it was an excrescence
which had to be cut out, a survival which needed to be got rid of,
because it was out of keeping with the rest. It remained for the most
part only as a formative principle, which used words and letters not as
crude imitations of other natural sounds, but as symbols of ideas which
were naturally associated with them. It received in another way a new
character; it affected not so much single words, as larger portions of
human speech. It regulated the juxtaposition of sounds and the cadence
of sentences. It was the music, not of song, but of speech, in prose as
well as verse. The old onomatopea of primitive language was refined into
an onomatopea of a higher kind, in which it is no longer true to say
that a particular sound corresponds to a motion or action of man or
beast or movement of nature, but that 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 human thoughts by the harmonious
composition of the words, syllables, letters, accents, quantities,
rhythms, rhymes, varieties and contrasts of all sorts. The poet with his
'Break, break, break' or his e pasin nekuessi kataphthimenoisin anassein
or his 'longius ex altoque sinum trahit,' can produce a far finer music
than any crude imitations of things or actions in sound, although a
letter or two having this imitative power may be a lesser element of
beauty in such passages. The same subtle sensibility, which adapts the
word to the thing, adapts the sentence or cadence to the general meaning
or spirit of the passage. This is the higher onomatopea which has
banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in great languages
and literatures.
We can see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by
various degrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis
or pitch, become the natural expressions of the finer parts of human
feeling or thought. And not only so, but letters themselves have a
significance; as Plato observes that the letter rho accent is expressive
of motion, the letters delta and tau of binding and rest, the letter
lambda of smoothness, nu of inwardness, the letter eta of length, the
letter omicron of roundness. These were often combined so as to form
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
in their English equivalents. Plato also remarks, as we remark, that the
onomatopoetic principle is far from prevailing uniformly, and further
that no explanation of language consistently corresponds with any system
of philosophy, however great may be the light which language throws
upon the nature of the mind. 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 to derive their vocal effect partly from
contrast of letters, but in which it is impossible to assign a precise
amount of meaning to each of the expressive and onomatopoetic letters.
A few of them are directly imitative, as for example the omega in oon,
which represents the round form of the egg by the figure of the mouth:
or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of the sound of the word
corresponds to the thing signified by it; or bombos (buzzing), of which
the first 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 speech has the co-operation of the whole body and may
be often assisted or half expressed by gesticulation. A sound or word
is not the work of the vocal organs only; 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 a movement of the eyes, nose,
fingers, hands, feet which contributes to the effect of it.
The principle of onomatopea has fallen into discredit, partly because
it has been supposed to imply an actual manufacture of words out of
syllables and letters, like a piece of joiner's work,--a theory of
language which is more and more refuted by facts, and more and more
going out of fashion with philologians; and partly also because the
traces of onomatopea in separate words become almost obliterated in the
course of ages. The poet of language cannot put in and pull out letters,
as a painter might insert or blot out a shade of colour to give effect
to his picture. It would be ridiculous for him to alter any received
form of a word in order to render it more expressive of the sense. He
can only select, perhaps out of some dialect, the form which is already
best adapted to his purpose. The true onomatopea is not a creative,
but a formative principle, which in the later stage of the history of
language ceases to act upon individual words; but still works through
the collocation of them 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, may be considered the differentiation of languages, i.e. the
manner in which differences of meaning and form have arisen in them.
Into their first creation we have ceased to enquire: it is their
aftergrowth with which we are now concerned. How did the roots or
substantial portions of words become modified or inflected? and how did
they receive separate meanings? First we remark that words are attracted
by the sounds and senses of other words, so that they form groups of
nouns and verbs analogous in sound and sense to one another, each noun
or verb putting forth inflexions, generally of two or three patterns,
and with exceptions. We do not say that we know how sense became first
allied to sound; but we have no difficulty in ascertaining how the
sounds and meanings of words were in time parted off or differentiated.
(1) The chief causes which regulate the variations of sound are (a)
double or differing analogies, which lead sometimes to one form,
sometimes to another (b) euphony, by which is meant chiefly the greater
pleasure to the ear and the greater facility to the organs of speech
which is given by a new formation or pronunciation of a word (c) the
necessity of finding new expressions for new classes or processes of
things. We are told that changes of sound take place by innumerable
gradations until a whole tribe or community or society find themselves
acquiescing in a new pronunciation or use of language. Yet no one
observes the change, or is at all aware that in the course of a lifetime
he and his contemporaries have appreciably varied their intonation or
use of words. On the other hand, the necessities of language seem to
require that the intermediate sounds or meanings of words should quickly
become fixed or set and not continue in a state of transition. The
process of settling down is aided by the organs of speech and by the use
of writing and printing. (2) The meaning of words varies because ideas
vary or the number of things which is included under them or with which
they are associated is increased. A single word is thus made to do duty
for many more things than were formerly expressed by it; and it parts
into different senses when the classes of things or ideas which are
represented by it are themselves different and distinct. A figurative
use of a word may easily pass into a new sense: a new meaning caught up
by association may become more important than all the rest. The good or
neutral sense of a word, such as Jesuit, Puritan, Methodist, Heretic,
has been often converted into a bad one by the malevolence of party
spirit. Double forms suggest different meanings and are often used to
express them; and the form or accent of a word has been not unfrequently
altered when there is a difference of meaning. The difference of gender
in nouns is utilized for the same reason. New meanings of words push
themselves into the vacant spaces of language and retire when they are
no longer needed. Language equally abhors vacancy and superfluity. But
the remedial measures by which both are eliminated are not due to any
conscious action of the human mind; nor is the force exerted by them
constraining or necessary.
(7) We have shown that language, although subject to laws, is far from
being of an exact and uniform nature. We may now speak briefly of the
faults of language. They may be compared to the faults of Geology, in
which different strata cross one another or meet at an angle, or mix
with one another either by slow transitions or by violent convulsions,
leaving many lacunae which can be no longer filled up, and often
becoming so complex that no true explanation of them can be given. So in
language there are the cross influences of meaning and sound, of logic
and grammar, of differing analogies, of words and the inflexions of
words, which often come into conflict with each other. The grammarian,
if he were to form new words, would make them all of the same pattern
according to what he conceives to be the rule, that is, the more common
usage of language. The subtlety of nature goes far beyond art, and it is
complicated by irregularity, so that often we can hardly say that there
is a right or wrong in the formation of words. For almost any formation
which is not at variance with the first principles of language is
possible and may be defended.
The imperfection of language is really due to the formation and
correlation of words by accident, that is to say, by principles which
are unknown to us. Hence we see why Plato, like ourselves unable to
comprehend the whole of language, was constrained to 'supplement the
poor creature imitation by another poor creature convention.' But the
poor creature convention in the end proves too much for all the rest:
for we do not ask what is the origin of words or whether they are formed
according to a correct analogy, but what is the usage of them; and we
are compelled to admit with Hermogenes in Plato and with Horace that
usage is the ruling principle, 'quem penes arbitrium est, et jus 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 be repeated for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years with
a religious accuracy, so that to the priests or rhapsodists of a nation
the whole or the greater part of a language is literally preserved;
secondly, it may be written down and in a written form distributed more
or less widely among the whole nation. In either case the language which
is familiarly spoken may have grown up wholly or in a great measure
independently of them. (1) The first of these processes has been
sometimes attended by the result that the sound of the words has been
carefully preserved and that the meaning of them has either perished
wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the efforts of modern
philology. The verses have been repeated as a chant or part of a ritual,
but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech. (2) The
invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular
epoch, and we are apt to think that such an inestimable gift would have
immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken
a long time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may
have elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence on language
has been increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention of
printing.
Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were
only dialects. So they continued to be in parts of the country in which
writing was not used or in which there was no diffusion of literature.
In most of the counties of England there is still a provincial style,
which has been sometimes made by a great poet the vehicle of his
fancies. When a book sinks into the mind of a nation, such as Luther's
Bible or the Authorized English Translation of the Bible, or again great
classical works like Shakspere or Milton, not only have new powers
of expression been diffused through a whole nation, but a great step
towards uniformity has been made. The instinct of language demands
regular grammar and correct spelling: these are imprinted deeply on the
tablets of a nation's memory by a common use of classical and popular
writers. In our own day we have attained to a point at which nearly
every printed book is spelt correctly and written grammatically.
(9) Proceeding further to trace the influence of literature on language
we note some other causes which have affected the higher use of it:
such as (1) the necessity of clearness and connexion; (2) the fear
of tautology; (3) the influence of metre, rhythm, rhyme, and of the
language of prose and verse upon one another; (4) the power of idiom and
quotation; (5) the relativeness of words 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 former cannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern
languages, if through the loss of inflections and genders they lack some
power or beauty or expressiveness or precision which is possessed by
the ancient, are in many other respects superior to them: the thought is
generally clearer, the connexion closer, the sentence and paragraph are
better distributed. The best modern languages, for example English or
French, possess as great a power of self-improvement as the Latin, if
not as the Greek. Nor does there seem to be any reason why they should
ever decline or decay. It is a popular remark that our great writers are
beginning to disappear: it may also be remarked that whenever a great
writer appears in the future he will find the English language as
perfect and as ready for use as in the days of Shakspere or Milton.
There is no reason to suppose that English or French will ever be
reduced to the low level of Modern Greek or of Mediaeval Latin. The wide
diffusion of great authors would make such a decline impossible. Nor
will modern languages be easily broken up by amalgamation with each
other. The distance between them is too wide to be spanned, the
differences are too great to be overcome, and the use of printing makes
it impossible that one of them should ever be lost in another.
The structure of the English language differs greatly from that of
either Latin or Greek. In the two latter, especially in Greek, sentences
are joined together by connecting particles. They are distributed on
the right hand and on the left by men, de, alla, kaitoi, kai de and the
like, or deduced from one another by ara, de, oun, toinun and the like.
In English the majority of sentences are independent and in apposition
to one another; they are laid side by side or slightly connected by the
copula. But within the sentence the expression of the logical relations
of the clauses is closer and more exact: there is less of apposition
and participial structure. The sentences thus laid side by side are also
constructed into paragraphs; these again are less distinctly marked in
Greek and Latin than in English. Generally French, German, and English
have an advantage over the classical languages in point of accuracy. The
three concords are more accurately observed in English than in either
Greek or Latin. On the other hand, the extension of the familiar use of
the masculine and feminine gender to objects of sense and abstract ideas
as well as to men and animals no doubt lends a nameless grace to style
which we have a difficulty in appreciating, and the possible variety in
the order of words gives more flexibility and also a kind of dignity to
the period. Of the comparative effect of accent and quantity and of the
relation between them in ancient and modern languages we are not able to
judge.
Another quality in which modern are superior to ancient languages is
freedom from tautology. No English style is thought tolerable in which,
except for the sake of emphasis, the same words are repeated at short
intervals. Of course the length of the interval must depend on the
character of the word. Striking words and expressions cannot be allowed
to reappear, if at all, except at the distance of a page or more.
Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions may or rather must recur in
successive lines. It seems to be a kind of impertinence to the reader
and strikes unpleasantly both on the mind and on the ear that the
same sounds should be used twice over, when another word or turn of
expression would have given a new shade of meaning to the thought and
would have added a pleasing variety to the sound. And the mind equally
rejects the repetition of the word and the use of a mere synonym for
it,--e.g. felicity and happiness. The cultivated mind desires something
more, which a skilful writer is easily able to supply out of his
treasure-house.
The fear of tautology has doubtless led to the multiplications of
words and the meanings of words, and generally to an enlargement of the
vocabulary. It is a very early instinct of language; for ancient poetry
is almost as free from tautology as the best modern writings. The speech
of young children, except in so far as they are compelled to repeat
themselves by the fewness of their words, also escapes from it. When
they grow up and have ideas which are beyond their powers of expression,
especially in writing, tautology begins to appear. In like manner when
language is 'contaminated' by philosophy it is apt to become awkward,
to stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow and freedom. No
philosophical writer with the exception of Plato, who is himself not
free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any high degree
of literary excellence.
To poetry the form and polish of language is chiefly to be attributed;
and the most critical period in the history of language is the
transition from verse to prose. At first mankind were contented to
express their thoughts in a set form of words having a kind of rhythm;
to which regularity was given by accent and quantity. But after a time
they demanded a greater degree of freedom, and to those who had all
their life been hearing poetry the first introduction of prose had the
charm of novelty. The prose romances into which the Homeric Poems were
converted, for a while probably gave more delight to the hearers or
readers of them than the Poems themselves, and in time the relation of
the two was reversed: the poems which had once been a necessity of the
human mind became a luxury: they were now superseded by prose, which
in all succeeding ages became the natural vehicle of expression to
all mankind. Henceforward prose and poetry formed each other. A
comparatively slender link between them was also furnished by proverbs.
We may trace in poetry how the simple succession of lines, not without
monotony, has passed into a complicated period, and how in prose, rhythm
and accent and the order of words and the balance of clauses, sometimes
not without a slight admixture of rhyme, make up a new kind of harmony,
swelling into strains not less majestic than those of Homer, Virgil, or
Dante.
One of the most curious and characteristic features of language,
affecting both syntax and style, is idiom. The meaning of the word
'idiom' is that which is peculiar, that which is familiar, the word or
expression which strikes us or comes home to us, which is more readily
understood or more easily remembered. It is a quality which really
exists in infinite degrees, which we turn into differences of kind by
applying the term only to conspicuous and striking examples of words
or phrases which have this quality. It often supersedes the laws of
language or the rules of grammar, or rather is to be regarded as another
law of language which is natural and necessary. The word or phrase which
has been repeated many times over is more intelligible and familiar
to us than one which is rare, and our familiarity with it more than
compensates for incorrectness or inaccuracy in the use of it. Striking
expressions also which have moved the hearts of nations or are the
precious stones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of
idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of grammar and are exempt from
the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put
words together in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not
idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of words or the use
of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will
be legitimate in another, unless we allow for this principle. We can
bear to have words and sentences used in new senses or in a new order or
even a little perverted in meaning when we are quite familiar with them.
Quotations are as often applied in a sense which the author did not
intend as in that which he did. The parody of the words of Shakspere or
of the Bible, which has in it something of the nature of a lie, is far
from unpleasing to us. The better known words, even if their meaning be
perverted, are more agreeable to us and have a greater power over us.
Most of us have experienced a sort of delight and feeling of curiosity
when we first came across or when we first 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 to every other. One letter harmonizes with another; every verb or
noun derives its meaning, 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 a word all the existing uses of it
have to be considered. Upon these depends the question whether it will
bear the proposed extension of meaning or not. According to the famous
expression of Luther, 'Words are living creatures, having hands and
feet.' When they cease to retain this living power of adaptation, when
they are only put together like the parts of a piece of furniture,
language becomes unpoetical, in expressive, 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 to obscure the fact that the sentence precedes the word and
that all language is relative. (1) It is relative to its own context.
Its meaning is modified by what 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 same sense 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, they may be
presupposed; there is no need to allude to them further. (3) It is
relative to the knowledge of the writer and reader or of the speaker and
hearer. Except for the sake of order and consecutiveness nothing ought
to be expressed which is already commonly or universally known. A word
or two may be sufficient to give an intimation to a friend; a long or
elaborate speech or composition is required to explain some new idea
to a popular audience or to the ordinary reader or to a young pupil.
Grammars and dictionaries are not to be despised; for in teaching we
need clearness rather than subtlety. But we must not therefore
forget that there is also a higher ideal of language in which all is
relative--sounds to sounds, words to words, the parts to the whole--in
which besides the lesser context of the book or speech, there is also
the larger context of history and circumstances.
The study of Comparative Philology has introduced into the world a new
science which more than any other binds up man with nature, and distant
ages and countries with one another. It may be said to have thrown a
light upon all other sciences and upon the nature of the human mind
itself. The true conception of it dispels many errors, not only of
metaphysics and theology, but also of natural knowledge. Yet it is far
from certain that this newly-found science will continue to progress in
the same surprising manner as heretofore; or that even if our materials
are largely increased, we shall arrive at much more definite conclusions
than at present. Like some other branches of knowledge, it may be
approaching a point at which it can no longer be profitably studied. But
at any rate it has brought back the philosophy of language from theory
to fact; it has passed out of the region of guesses and hypotheses, and
has attained the dignity of an Inductive Science. And it is not without
practical and political importance. It gives a new interest to distant
and subject countries; it brings back the dawning light from one end of
the earth to the other. Nations, like individuals, are better understood
by us when we know something of their early life; and when they are
better understood by us, we feel more kindly towards them. Lastly, we
may remember that all knowledge is valuable for its own sake; and we
may also hope that a deeper insight into the nature of human speech will
give us a greater command of it and enable us to make a nobler use
of it. (Compare again W. Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des
menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science
of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in die Psychologie und
Sprachwissenschaft:' and for the latter part of the Essay, Delbruck,
'Study of Language;' Paul's 'Principles of the History of Language:' to
the latter work the author of this 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
has been 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 a truth 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 every man's name, as I tell him, is that which he is called.
To this he replies--'If all the world were to call you Hermogenes,
that would not be your name.' And when I am anxious to have a further
explanation he is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he
has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would only tell, and
could entirely convince me, if he chose to be intelligible. Tell me,
Socrates, what this oracle means; or rather tell me, if you will be so
good, what is your own view of the truth or correctness of names, which
I would far sooner hear.
SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that 'hard is
the knowledge of the good.' And the knowledge of names is a great
part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the
fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete
education in grammar and language--these are his own words--and then
I should have been at once 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 the truth about such matters; I
will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus in the investigation
of them. When he declares that your name is not really Hermogenes, I
suspect that he is only making fun of you;--he means to say that you are
no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after a fortune
and never in luck. But, as I was saying, there is a good deal of
difficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave
the question open until we have heard both sides.
HERMOGENES: I have often talked over this matter, both with Cratylus
and others, and cannot convince myself that there is any principle of
correctness in names other than convention and agreement; any name which
you give, in my opinion, is the right one, and if you change that and
give another, the new name is as correct as the old--we frequently
change the names of our slaves, and the newly-imposed name is as good
as the old: for there is no name given to anything by nature; all
is convention and habit of the users;--such is my view. But if I am
mistaken I shall be happy to hear and learn of Cratylus, or of any one
else.
SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be right, Hermogenes: let us
see;--Your meaning is, that the name of each thing is only that which
anybody agrees to call 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 a horse or a horse a man, you mean to say that a man will be rightly
called a horse 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 the world:--that is your meaning?
HERMOGENES: He would, according to my view.
SOCRATES: But how about truth, then? you would acknowledge that there is
in words 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
proposition says 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
every part?
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
and false?
HERMOGENES: So we must infer.
SOCRATES: And the name of anything is that which any one affirms to be
the name?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And will there be so many names of each thing as everybody
says that there are? and will they be true names at the time of uttering
them?
HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates, I can conceive no correctness of names other
than this; you give one name, and I another; and in different cities and
countries there are different names for the same things; Hellenes differ
from barbarians in their use of names, and the several Hellenic tribes
from one another.
SOCRATES: But would you say, Hermogenes, that the things differ as the
names differ? and are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells
us? For he says that man is the measure of all things, and that things
are to me as they appear to me, and that they are to you as they appear
to you. Do you agree with him, 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
my perplexity 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 thing as a bad man?
HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but I have often had reason to think that there
are very 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
the very 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 they appear 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 really
distinguishable, you will allow, I think, that the assertion of
Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is
true to him, one man cannot in reality be wiser than another.
HERMOGENES: He cannot.
SOCRATES: Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus, that all
things equally belong to all men at the same moment and always; for
neither on his view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and
vice are always equally 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, they must be supposed to have their own proper and
permanent essence: they are not in relation to us, or influenced by
us, fluctuating according to our fancy, but they are independent, and
maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by nature.
HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you have said the truth.
SOCRATES: Does what I am saying apply only to the things themselves, or
equally to 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, and not according to our opinion of them? In cutting, for
example, we do not cut as we please, and with any chance instrument;
but we cut with the proper instrument only, and according to the natural
process of cutting; and the natural process is right and will succeed,
but any other will fail and be of no use 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 way is 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 the successful speaker rather be he who speaks in the natural way
of speaking, and as things ought to be spoken, and with the natural
instrument? Any other mode of 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, is not naming also a sort of action?
HERMOGENES: True.
SOCRATES: And we saw that actions were not relative to ourselves, but
had a special nature of their own?
HERMOGENES: Precisely.
SOCRATES: Then the argument would lead us to infer that names ought to
be given according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument,
and not at our pleasure: 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
pierced with 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 a shuttle?'
And you answer, 'A weaving instrument.'
HERMOGENES: Well.
SOCRATES: And I ask again, 'What do we do when we weave?'--The answer
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 of
instruments in general?
HERMOGENES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And now suppose that I ask a similar question about names:
will you answer 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
things according to their natures?
HERMOGENES: Certainly we do.
SOCRATES: Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing
natures, 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
a weaver? and the teacher will use the name well--and well means like a
teacher?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when the weaver uses the shuttle, whose work will he be
using well?
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
the legislator?
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 a maker of names; and this is the legislator, who of all skilled
artisans in the world 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
the carpenter look in making the shuttle? Does he not look to that which
is naturally 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 he made 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 have the true form of the shuttle; and whatever is the
shuttle best adapted to each kind 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
discovered the instrument which is naturally adapted to each work, he
must express this natural form, and not others which he fancies, in the
material, whatever it may be, which he employs; for example, he ought to
know how to put into iron the forms 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 their uses?
HERMOGENES: True.
SOCRATES: For the several forms of shuttles naturally answer to the
several kinds 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 put the true natural name of each thing into sounds and syllables,
and to make and give all names with a view to the ideal name, if he is
to be a namer in any true sense? And we must remember that different
legislators will not use the same syllables. For neither does every
smith, although he may be making the same instrument for the same
purpose, make them all of the same iron. The form must be the same, but
the material may vary, and still the instrument may be equally good of
whatever iron made, whether in Hellas or in a foreign country;--there is
no difference.
HERMOGENES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the legislator, whether he be Hellene or barbarian, is not
therefore to be deemed by you a worse legislator, provided he gives the
true and proper form of the name in whatever syllables; this or that
country makes no matter.
HERMOGENES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: But who then is to determine whether the proper form is given
to the shuttle, whatever sort of wood may be used? the carpenter who
makes, or the weaver 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 who knows how to direct what is being done, and who will know also
whether the work is 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, and will know whether the work is well done, in this or any other
country? Will not the 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 a
dialectician?
HERMOGENES: Yes; that would be his name.
SOCRATES: Then the work of the carpenter is to make a rudder, and the
pilot has to 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
dialectician must 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 no such light matter as you fancy, or the work of light or chance
persons; and Cratylus is right in saying that things have names by
nature, and that not every man is an artificer of names, but he only who
looks to the name which each thing by nature has, and is able to express
the true forms of things in letters and syllables.
HERMOGENES: I cannot answer you, Socrates; but I find a difficulty in
changing my opinion all in a moment, and I think that I should be more
readily persuaded, if you would show me what this is which you term the
natural fitness of names.
SOCRATES: My good Hermogenes, I have none to show. Was I not telling you
just now (but you have forgotten), that I knew nothing, and proposing to
share the enquiry with you? But now that you and I have talked over the
matter, a step has been gained; for we have discovered that names have
by nature a truth, and that 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 you must pay them well both in money and in thanks; these are the
Sophists, of whom your brother, Callias, has--rather dearly--bought the
reputation of wisdom. But you have not yet come into your inheritance,
and therefore you had better go to him, and beg and entreat him to tell
you what he has learnt from Protagoras about the fitness of names.
HERMOGENES: But how inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating
Protagoras and 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
he say?
SOCRATES: He often speaks of them; notably and nobly in the places where
he distinguishes the different names which Gods and men give to the same
things. Does he not in these passages make a remarkable statement about
the correctness of names? For the Gods must clearly be supposed to call
things by their right and 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
single combat with Hephaestus?
'Whom,' as he says, 'the Gods call Xanthus, and men call Scamander.'
HERMOGENES: I remember.
SOCRATES: Well, and about this river--to know that he ought to be called
Xanthus and not Scamander--is not that a solemn lesson? Or about the
bird which, as he says,
'The Gods call Chalcis, and men Cymindis:'
to be taught how much more correct the name Chalcis is than the name
Cymindis--do you deem that a light matter? Or about Batieia and Myrina?
(Compare Il. 'The hill which men call Batieia and the immortals the tomb
of the sportive Myrina.') And there are many other observations of the
same kind in Homer and other poets. Now, I think that this is beyond the
understanding of you and me; but the names of Scamandrius and Astyanax,
which he affirms to have been the names of Hector's son, are more within
the range of human faculties, as I am disposed to think; and what
the poet means by correctness may be more readily apprehended in that
instance: you will remember I 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 the names 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
the unwise 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 of Scamandrius 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
their wives?
HERMOGENES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: Then he must have thought Astyanax to be a more correct name
for the boy than Scamandrius?
HERMOGENES: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And what is the reason of this? Let us consider:--does he not
himself 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 the city 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
of Astyanax--both are Hellenic; and a king (anax) and a holder (ektor)
have nearly the same meaning, and are both descriptive of a king; for
a man is clearly the holder of that of which he is king; he rules,
and owns, and holds it. But, perhaps, you may think that I am talking
nonsense; and indeed I believe that I myself did not know what I meant
when I imagined that I had found 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 the right 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 of nature, when an animal produces after his kind, and not of
extraordinary births;--if contrary to nature a horse have a calf, then I
should not call that a foal but a calf; nor do I call any inhuman birth
a man, but only a natural birth. And the same may be said of trees and
other things. Do you agree with me?
HERMOGENES: Yes, I agree.
SOCRATES: Very good. But you had better watch me and see that I do not
play tricks with you. For on the same principle the son of a king is to
be called a king. And whether the syllables of the name are the same or
not the same, makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained; nor
does the addition or subtraction of a letter make any difference so
long as the essence of the thing remains 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
of letters, which you know are not the same as the letters themselves
with the exception 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 to them; but so long as we introduce the meaning,
and there can be no mistake, the name of the letter is quite correct.
Take, for example, the letter beta--the addition of eta, tau, alpha,
gives no offence, and does not prevent the whole name from having the
value which the legislator intended--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 son of a king, the good son or the noble son of a good or noble
sire; and similarly the offspring of every kind, in the regular course
of nature, is like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the
syllables may be disguised until they appear different to the ignorant
person, and he may not recognize them, although they are the same, just
as any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different
disguises of colour and smell, although to the physician, who regards
the power of them, they are the same, and he is not put out by the
addition; and in like manner the etymologist is not put out by the
addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or indeed
by the change of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the
meaning. As was just 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 with the letters of their names has Archepolis
(ruler of the city)--and yet the meaning is the same. And there are many
other names which just mean 'king.' Again, there are several names for
a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war)
and Eupolemus (good warrior); and others which denote a physician, as
Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and there
are many others which might be cited, 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 the course of nature?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And what of those who follow out of the course of nature,
and are prodigies? 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 he belongs, just as in the case which was before supposed
of a horse foaling a calf.
HERMOGENES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be
called irreligious?
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, his should have an opposite meaning.
HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Again, Hermogenes, there is Orestes (the man of the mountains)
who appears to be rightly called; whether chance gave the name, or
perhaps some poet who meant to express the brutality and fierceness and
mountain wildness of his 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 for remaining) is one who is patient and persevering in the
accomplishment of his resolves, and by his virtue crowns them; and his
continuance at Troy with all the vast army is a proof of that admirable
endurance in him which is signified by the name Agamemnon. I also think
that Atreus is rightly called; for his murder of Chrysippus and his
exceeding cruelty to Thyestes are damaging and destructive to his
reputation--the name is a little altered and disguised so as not to be
intelligible to every one, but to the etymologist there is no difficulty
in seeing the meaning, for whether you think of him as ateires the
stubborn, or as atrestos the fearless, or as ateros the destructive one,
the name is perfectly correct in every point of view. And I think that
Pelops is also named appropriately; for, as the name implies, he is
rightly called Pelops who sees what is near only (o ta pelas oron).
HERMOGENES: How so?
SOCRATES: Because, according to the tradition, he had no forethought or
foresight of all the evil which the murder of Myrtilus would entail
upon his whole race in remote ages; he saw only what was at hand and
immediate,--or in other words, pelas (near), in his eagerness to win
Hippodamia by all means for his bride. Every one would agree that the
name of Tantalus is rightly given and 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
his life--last of all, came the utter ruin of his country; and after his
death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world
below--all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine
that some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted
down by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus;
and into this form, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been
transmuted. The name of Zeus, who is his alleged father, has also an
excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like
a sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and
use the one half, and others who use the other half call him Dia; the
two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name,
as we were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is
more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and king of 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 first sight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for
stupidity), and we might rather expect Zeus to be the child of a mighty
intellect. Which is the fact; 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 chatharon chai 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 (apo tou oran ta
ano) from looking upwards; which, as philosophers tell us, is the way to
have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore correct. If I could
remember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried more
conclusions of the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the Gods,--then
I might have seen whether this wisdom, which has come to me all in an
instant, I know not whence, will or will not hold good to the end.
HERMOGENES: You seem to me, Socrates, to be quite like a prophet newly
inspired, and to be uttering oracles.
SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and I believe that I caught the inspiration
from the great Euthyphro of the Prospaltian deme, who gave me a long
lecture which commenced at dawn: he talked and I listened, and his
wisdom and enchanting ravishment has not only filled my ears but taken
possession of my soul, and to-day I shall let his superhuman power
work and finish the investigation of names--that will be the way; but
to-morrow, if you are so disposed, we will conjure him away, and make
a purgation of him, if we can only find some priest or sophist who is
skilled in purifications of this sort.
HERMOGENES: With all my heart; for am very curious to hear the rest of
the enquiry about names.
SOCRATES: Then let us proceed; and where would you have us begin, now
that we have got a sort of outline of the enquiry? Are there any names
which witness of themselves that they are not given arbitrarily, but
have a natural fitness? The names of heroes and of men in general are
apt to be deceptive because they are often called after ancestors with
whose names, as we were saying, they may have no business; or they are
the expression of a wish like Eutychides (the son of good fortune), or
Sosias (the Saviour), or Theophilus (the beloved of God), and others.
But I think that we had better leave these, for there will be more
chance of finding correctness in the names of immutable essences;--there
ought to have been more care taken about them when they were named,
and perhaps there may have been some more than human power at work
occasionally in giving them names.
HERMOGENES: I think so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the Gods, and
show that they are rightly named Gods?
HERMOGENES: Yes, that will be well.
SOCRATES: My notion would be something of this sort:--I suspect that the
sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the Gods of many
barbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing
that they were always moving and running, from their running nature
they were called Gods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became
acquainted with the other Gods, they proceeded to apply the same name to
them all. Do you think that 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? Tell me 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
came first?
HERMOGENES: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: He says of them--
'But now that fate has closed over this race They are holy demons upon
the 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
golden men, not men literally made of gold, but good and noble; and I am
convinced of this, 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 be said 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
them demons, because they were daemones (knowing or wise), and in our
older Attic dialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets say
truly, that when a good man dies he has honour and a mighty portion
among the dead, and becomes a demon; which is a name given to him
signifying wisdom. And I say too, that every wise man who happens to be
a good man is more than human (daimonion) both in 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 the meaning of the word 'hero'? (Eros with an eta, in the old writing
eros with an epsilon.)
SOCRATES: I think that there is no difficulty in explaining, for the
name is not 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 you will see better that the name heros is only a slight
alteration of Eros, from whom the heroes sprang: either this is
the meaning, or, if not this, then they must have been skilful as
rhetoricians and dialecticians, and able to put the question (erotan),
for eirein is equivalent to legein. And therefore, as I was saying,
in the Attic dialect the heroes turn out to be rhetoricians and
questioners. All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a
tribe of sophists and rhetors. But can you tell me why men are called
anthropoi?--that is more difficult.
HERMOGENES: No, I cannot; and I would not try even if I could, because I
think that 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 ingenious thought strikes me, and, if I am not careful, before
to-morrow's dawn I shall be wiser than I ought to be. Now, attend to me;
and first, remember that we often put in and pull out letters in words,
and give names as we please and change the accents. Take, for example,
the word Dii Philos; in order to convert this from a sentence into
a noun, we omit one of the iotas and sound the middle syllable grave
instead of acute; as, on the other hand, letters are sometimes inserted
in words instead of being omitted, and the acute takes the place of the
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, has been 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 other animals
never examine, or consider, or look up at what they see, but that man
not only sees (opope) but considers and looks up at that which he sees,
and hence 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. You know 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
word psuche (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 that those who first used the name psuche meant to express that
the soul when in the body is the source of life, and gives the power of
breath and revival (anapsuchon), and when this reviving power fails then
the body perishes and dies, and this, if I am not mistaken, they called
psyche. But please stay a moment; I fancy that I can discover something
which will be more acceptable to the disciples of Euthyphro, for I
am afraid that they will scorn this explanation. What do you say to
another?
HERMOGENES: Let me hear.
SOCRATES: What is that which holds and carries and gives life and motion
to the entire 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
the ordering and containing principle of all things?
HERMOGENES: Yes; I do.
SOCRATES: Then you may well call that power phuseche which carries and
holds nature (e phusin okei, kai ekei), and this may be refined away
into psuche.
HERMOGENES: Certainly; and this derivation is, I think, more scientific
than the other.
SOCRATES: It is so; but I cannot help laughing, if I am to suppose that
this was 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 little permutation is allowed. For some say that the body is the grave
(sema) of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present
life; or again the index of the soul, because the soul gives indications
to (semainei) the body; probably the Orphic poets were the inventors of
the name, and they were under the impression that the soul is suffering
the punishment of sin, and that the body 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; according to 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 you were giving of Zeus? I should like to know whether any
similar principle of correctness 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 are sure that the names by which they call
themselves, whatever they may be, are true. And this is the best of all
principles; and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will
call them by any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like,
because we do not know of any other. That also, I think, is a very good
custom, and one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then,
if you please, in the first place announce to them that we are not
enquiring about them; we do not presume that we are able to do so;
but we are enquiring about the meaning of men in giving them these
names,--in this there can be small blame.
HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are quite right, and I would
like to do as 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 been considerable 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. For example, that which we term ousia is by some called
esia, and by others again osia. Now that the essence of things should
be called estia, which is akin to the first of these (esia = estia), is
rational enough. And there is reason in the Athenians calling that estia
which participates in ousia. For in ancient times we too seem to have
said esia for ousia, and this you may note to have been the idea of
those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered to estia,
which was natural enough if they meant that estia was the essence of
things. Those again who read osia seem to have inclined to the opinion
of Heracleitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them the
pushing principle (othoun) is the cause and ruling power of all things,
and is therefore rightly called osia. Enough of this, which is all that
we who know nothing can affirm. Next in order after Hestia we ought to
consider Rhea and Cronos, although the name of Cronos has been already
discussed. But I dare say that 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
antiquity as 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
and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says
that you cannot go into the same water twice.
HERMOGENES: That is true.
SOCRATES: Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the
names of Cronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty
much in the doctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of
streams to both of them purely accidental? Compare the line in which
Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiod also, tells of
'Ocean, the origin of Gods, and mother Tethys (Il.--the line is not
found in the extant works of Hesiod.).'
And again, Orpheus says, that
'The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused his
sister Tethys, who was his mother's daughter.'
You see that this is a remarkable coincidence, and all in the direction
of Heracleitus.
HERMOGENES: I think that there is something in what you say, Socrates;
but I do not 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 these two 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,
whether the 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
inventor of the name had been stopped by the watery element in his
walks, and not allowed 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 the name 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 being the shaker of the earth,
has been named from shaking (seiein), and then pi and delta have been
added. Pluto gives wealth (Ploutos), and his name means the giver of
wealth, which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appear
to imagine that the term Hades is connected with the invisible (aeides)
and so they 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
this deity, and the foolish fears which people have of him, such as the
fear of always being with him after death, and of the soul denuded of
the body going to him (compare Rep.), my belief is that all is quite
consistent, and that the office 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 you which chain does any animal feel to be the stronger? and which
confines him more 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 he did 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
should certainly 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
the greatest?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is any desire stronger than the thought that you will be
made better by associating with another?
HERMOGENES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And is not that the reason, Hermogenes, why no one, who has
been to him, is willing to come back to us? Even the Sirens, like all
the rest of the world, have been laid under his spells. Such a charm, as
I imagine, is the God able to infuse into his words. And, according to
this view, he is the perfect and accomplished Sophist, and the great
benefactor of the inhabitants of the other world; and even to us who are
upon earth he sends from below exceeding blessings. For he has much more
than he wants down there; wherefore he is called Pluto (or the rich).
Note also, that he will have nothing to do with men while they are in
the body, but only when the soul is liberated from the desires and evils
of the body. Now there is a great deal of philosophy and reflection in
that; for in their liberated state he can bind them with the desire of
virtue, but while they are flustered and maddened by the body, not even
father Cronos himself would suffice to keep them with him in his own
far-famed chains.
HERMOGENES: There is a deal of truth in what you say.
SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and the legislator called him Hades, not from
the unseen (aeides)--far otherwise, but from his knowledge (eidenai) of
all noble things.
HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and
Apollo, and Athene, and Hephaestus, and Ares, and the other deities?
SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here
is the lovely one (erate)--for Zeus, according to tradition, loved
and married her; possibly also the name may have been given when the
legislator was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of
the air (aer), putting the end in the place of the beginning. You will
recognize the truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several
times over. People dread the name of Pherephatta 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 nature of names. But they go
changing the name into Phersephone, and they are terrified 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,
is wisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe
(Pherepapha), or some name like it, because she touches that which is
in motion (tou pheromenon ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And
Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise. They alter
her name into Pherephatta now-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 supposed to 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
power of the God.
HERMOGENES: How so?
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain, for I do not believe that any
single name could have been better adapted to express the attributes of
the God, embracing and in a manner signifying all four of them,--music,
and prophecy, and medicine, and archery.
HERMOGENES: That must be a strange name, and I should like to hear the
explanation.
SOCRATES: Say rather an harmonious name, as beseems the God of Harmony.
In the first place, the purgations and purifications which doctors and
diviners use, and their fumigations with drugs magical or medicinal,
as well as their washings and lustral sprinklings, have all one and the
same object, which is to make a man pure both in body and soul.
HERMOGENES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And is not Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the
absolver from all impurities?
HERMOGENES: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as
being the physician who orders them, he may be rightly called Apolouon
(purifier); or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth
and sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called
Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the Thessalian dialect, for all the
Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aei Ballon (always shooting),
because he is a master archer who never misses; or again, the name
may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as in akolouthos,
and akoitis, and in many other words the alpha is supposed to mean
'together,' so the meaning of the name Apollo will be 'moving together,'
whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in the harmony
of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by an
harmonious power, as astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare.
And he is the God who presides over harmony, and makes all things move
together, both among Gods and among men. And as in the words akolouthos
and akoitis the alpha is 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 of destruction (apolon). Now the suspicion
of this destructive power still haunts the minds of some who do not
consider the true value of the name, which, as I was saying just now,
has reference to all the powers of the God, who is the single one,
the everdarting, the purifier, the mover together (aplous, aei Ballon,
apolouon, omopolon). The name of the Muses and of music would seem to be
derived from their making philosophical enquiries (mosthai); and Leto
is called 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 often called by strangers--they seem to imply by it her
amiability, and her smooth and easy-going way of behaving. Artemis is
named from her healthy (artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of
her love of virginity, perhaps because she is a proficient in virtue
(arete), and perhaps also as hating intercourse of the sexes (ton aroton
misesasa). He who gave the Goddess her name 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 and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the
serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection
to your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke.
Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver of wine), Didoinusos, as he might
be called in fun,--and oinos is properly oionous, because wine makes
those who drink, think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (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
armed dances. For the elevation of oneself or anything else above
the earth, or by the 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 modern
interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the
ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert
that he meant by Athene 'mind' (nous) and 'intelligence' (dianoia), and
the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and
indeed calls her by a still higher title, 'divine intelligence' (Thou
noesis), as though he would say: This is she who has the 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. The
meaning is that the word theonoa = theounoa is a curtailed form of theou
noesis, but the omitted letters do not agree.). Perhaps, however, the
name Theonoe may mean 'she who knows divine things' (Theia noousa)
better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the
author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence (en
ethei noesin), and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however,
either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer
form, and called her Athene.
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 is obvious to anybody.
HERMOGENES: That is very probable, until some more probable notion gets
into your 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)
and manliness, or if you please, from his hard and unchangeable nature,
which is the meaning of arratos: the latter is a derivation in every way
appropriate to the God of war.
HERMOGENES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And now, by the Gods, let us have no more of the Gods, for I
am afraid of them; ask about anything but them, and thou shalt see how
the steeds of Euthyphro can prance.
HERMOGENES: Only one more God! I should like to know about Hermes, of
whom I am said not to be a true son. Let us make him out, and then I
shall know whether there is any meaning in what Cratylus says.
SOCRATES: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech,
and signifies that he is the interpreter (ermeneus), or messenger, or
thief, or liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to
do with language; as I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of
the use of speech, 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; and we may imagine him dictating to us the use
of this name: 'O my friends,' says he to us, 'seeing that he is the
contriver of tales or speeches, you may rightly call him Eirhemes.'
And this has been improved by us, as we think, into Hermes. Iris also
appears to have been called from the verb 'to tell' (eirein), because
she was a messenger.
HERMOGENES: Then I am very sure that Cratylus was quite right in saying
that I was 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 son of Hermes.
HERMOGENES: How do you make that out?
SOCRATES: You are aware that speech signifies all things (pan), and is
always turning 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
which dwells above among the Gods, whereas falsehood dwells among men
below, and is rough like the goat of tragedy; for tales and falsehoods
have generally to do with 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
the perpetual 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 is speech or the brother of speech, and that brother should
be like brother is no marvel. But, as I was saying, my dear Hermogenes,
let us get away from the Gods.
HERMOGENES: From these sort of Gods, by all means, Socrates. But why
should we not 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 not refuse.
HERMOGENES: You will oblige me.
SOCRATES: How would you have me begin? Shall I take first of all him
whom you mentioned first--the sun?
HERMOGENES: Very good.
SOCRATES: The origin of the sun will probably be clearer in the Doric
form, for the Dorians call him alios, and this name is given to him
because when he rises he 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 the same as poikillein (to variegate),
because he variegates the productions of the earth.
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
moon receives her light from the sun.
HERMOGENES: Why do you say so?
SOCRATES: The two words selas (brightness) and phos (light) have much
the same meaning?
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 always adds 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 neon aei) she may very properly have the name selaenoneoaeia; and
this when hammered into shape becomes selanaia.
HERMOGENES: A real dithyrambic sort of name that, Socrates. But what do
you say of the month and the stars?
SOCRATES: Meis (month) is called from meiousthai (to lessen), because
suffering diminution; the name of astra (stars) seems to be derived from
astrape, which is 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 has deserted 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 of this sort.
HERMOGENES: What is it?
SOCRATES: I will tell you; but I should like to know first whether you
can tell me 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 this and several other words?--My belief is that they are of foreign
origin. For the Hellenes, especially those who were under the dominion
of the barbarians, often borrowed from them.
HERMOGENES: What is the inference?
SOCRATES: Why, you know that any one who seeks to demonstrate the
fitness of these names according to the Hellenic language, and not
according to the language 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 is not easily brought into relation with the Hellenic tongue, and
the Phrygians may 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;
for something to say about them may easily be found. And thus I get rid
of pur and udor. Aer (air), Hermogenes, may be explained as the element
which raises (airei) things from the earth, or as ever flowing (aei
rei), or because the flux 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), in the sense of wind-flux (pneumatorroun); and
because this moving wind may be expressed by either term he employs
the word air (aer = aetes rheo). Aither (aether) I should interpret as
aeitheer; this may be correctly said, because this element is always
running in a flux about the air (aei thei peri tou aera reon). The
meaning of the word ge (earth) comes out better when in the form of
gaia, 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 know the probable truth about them; they are rightly called the orai
because they divide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and
the fruits of the earth. The words eniautos and etos appear to be the
same,--'that which brings to light the plants and growths of the
earth in their turn, and passes them in review within itself (en eauto
exetazei)': this is broken up into two words, eniautos from en eauto,
and etos from etazei, just as the original name of Zeus was divided
into Zena and Dia; and the whole proposition means that his power of
reviewing from within is one, but has two names, two words 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
would explain the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in
those charming words--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) and understanding (sunesis), and judgment (gnome), and
knowledge (episteme), and all 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
head only this moment: I believe that the primeval givers of names were
undoubtedly like too many of our modern philosophers, who, in their
search after the nature of things, are always getting dizzy from
constantly going round and round, and then they imagine that the
world is going round and round and moving in all directions; and this
appearance, which arises out of their own internal condition, they
suppose to be a reality of nature; they think that there is nothing
stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that the world is
always full of every sort of motion and change. The consideration of the
names which 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
just cited, 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
name indicative 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
of motion), 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 would rather, 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 in process of creation. The giver of the name wanted
to express this longing of the soul, for the original name was neoesis,
and not noesis; but eta took the place of a double epsilon. The word
sophrosune is the salvation (soteria) of that wisdom (phronesis) which
we were just now considering. Epioteme (knowledge) is akin to this, and
indicates that the soul which is good for anything follows (epetai) the
motion of things, neither anticipating them nor falling behind them;
wherefore the word should rather be read as epistemene, inserting
epsilon nu. Sunesis (understanding) may be regarded in like manner as
a 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 company with the nature of things. Sophia (wisdom) is very dark,
and appears not to be of native growth; the meaning is, touching the
motion or stream of things. You must remember that the poets, when they
speak of the commencement of any rapid motion, often use the word esuthe
(he rushed); and there was a famous Lacedaemonian who was named Sous
(Rush), for by this word the Lacedaemonians signify rapid motion, and
the touching (epaphe) of motion is expressed by sophia, for all things
are supposed to be in motion. Good (agathon) is the name which is given
to the admirable (agasto) in nature; for, although all things move,
still there are degrees of motion; some are swifter, some slower; but
there are some things which are admirable for their swiftness, and this
admirable part of nature is called agathon. Dikaiosune (justice) is
clearly dikaiou sunesis (understanding of the just); but the actual word
dikaion is more difficult: men are only agreed to a certain extent about
justice, and then they begin to disagree. For those who suppose all
things to be in motion conceive the greater part of nature to be a mere
receptacle; and they say that there is a penetrating power which passes
through all this, and is the instrument of creation in all, and is the
subtlest and swiftest element; for if it were not the subtlest, and a
power which none can keep out, and also the swiftest, passing by other
things as if they were standing still, it could not penetrate through
the moving universe. And this element, which superintends all things and
pierces (diaion) all, is rightly called dikaion; the letter k is only
added for the sake of euphony. Thus far, as I was saying, there is a
general agreement about the nature of justice; but I, Hermogenes, being
an enthusiastic disciple, have been told in a mystery that the justice
of which I am speaking is also the cause of the world: now a cause
is that because of which anything is created; and some one comes and
whispers in my ear that justice is rightly so called because partaking
of the nature of the cause, and I 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 ask tiresome questions, and am leaping over the barriers,
and have been already sufficiently answered, and they try to satisfy me
with one derivation after another, and at length they quarrel. For one
of them says that justice is the sun, and that he only is the piercing
(diaionta) and burning (kaonta) element which is the guardian of nature.
And when I joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered by the
satirical remark, 'What, is there no justice in the world when the sun
is down?' And when I earnestly beg my questioner to tell me his own
honest opinion, he says, 'Fire in the abstract'; 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, that justice is mind, for mind, as
they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and orders all
things, and passes through all things. At last, my friend, I find myself
in far greater perplexity about the nature of justice than 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 reasons which I
have mentioned.
HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are not improvising now; you
must have heard 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
the originality of the rest. What remains after justice? I do not think
that we have as yet discussed courage (andreia),--injustice (adikia),
which is obviously nothing more than a hindrance to the penetrating
principle (diaiontos), need not be considered. Well, then, the name
of andreia seems to imply a battle;--this battle is in the world of
existence, and according to the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux
(enantia rhon): if you extract the delta from andreia, the name at once
signifies the thing, and you may clearly understand that andreia is not
the stream opposed to every stream, but only to that which is contrary
to justice, for otherwise courage would not have been praised. The words
arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similar allusion to the same
principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) I suspect to
be the same word as goun (birth): thelu (female) appears to be partly
derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makes
things flourish (tethelenai).
HERMOGENES: That is surely probable.
SOCRATES: Yes; and the very word thallein (to flourish) seems to
figure the growth of youth, which is swift and sudden ever. And this is
expressed by the legislator 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. There are a good many names generally thought to
be of importance, which have still to 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 of mind: you have only to take away the tau and insert two
omichrons, one between the 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 have been long ago buried and disguised by people sticking on
and stripping off letters for the sake of euphony, and twisting and
bedizening them in all sorts of 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 the addition of some one who cares
nothing about the truth, but thinks only of putting the mouth into
shape. And the additions are often such that at last no human being can
possibly make out the original meaning of the word. Another example 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
letters which you please, names will be too easily made, and any name
may be adapted to any 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
have allowed me to add mechane (contrivance) to techne (art) I shall
be at the top of my bent, for I conceive mechane to be a sign of great
accomplishment--anein; for mekos has the meaning of greatness, and these
two, mekos and anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying,
being now at the top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning
of the two words arete (virtue) and kakia (vice); arete I do not as yet
understand, but kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles
which preceded, for all things being in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos
ion (going badly); and this evil motion when existing in the soul has
the general name of kakia, or vice, specially appropriated to it. The
meaning of kakos ienai may be further illustrated by the use of deilia
(cowardice), which ought to have come after andreia, but was forgotten,
and, as I fear, is not the only word which has been passed over. Deilia
signifies that the soul is bound with a strong chain (desmos), for
lian means strength, and therefore deilia expresses the greatest and
strongest bond of the soul; and aporia (difficulty) is an evil of the
same nature (from a (alpha) not, and poreuesthai to go), like anything
else which is an impediment to motion and movement. Then the word kakia
appears to mean kakos ienai, 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 sort of thing, arete will be the opposite of
it, signifying in the first place ease of motion, then that the stream
of the good soul is unimpeded, and has therefore the attribute of ever
flowing without let or hindrance, and is therefore called arete, or,
more correctly, aeireite (ever-flowing), and may perhaps have had
another form, airete (eligible), indicating that nothing is more
eligible than virtue, and this has been hammered into arete. I daresay
that you will deem this to be another invention of mine, but I think
that if the previous word kakia was right, then arete is also right.
HERMOGENES: But what is the meaning of kakon, which has played so great
a part in your previous discourse?
SOCRATES: That is a very singular word about which I can hardly form an
opinion, 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
words and 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
former derivations. 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 (aei ischon 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, and has 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 the principle 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 is not mind the beautiful (kalon)?
HERMOGENES: That is evident.
SOCRATES: And are not the works of intelligence and mind worthy of
praise, and are not other works worthy of blame?
HERMOGENES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Physic does the work of a physician, and carpentering does the
works of 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
which we 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
discover for yourself by the light of the previous examples,--for it is
a sister word to episteme, meaning just the motion (pora) of the soul
accompanying the world, and things which are done upon this principle
are called sumphora or sumpheronta, because they are carried round with
the world.
HERMOGENES: That is probable.
SOCRATES: Again, cherdaleon (gainful) is called from cherdos (gain), but
you must alter the delta into nu if you want to get at the meaning; for
this word also signifies good, but in another way; he who gave the name
intended to express the power of admixture (kerannumenon) and universal
penetration in the good; in forming the word, however, he inserted a
delta instead of a nu, and so made kerdos.
HERMOGENES: Well, but what is lusiteloun (profitable)?
SOCRATES: I suppose, Hermogenes, that people do not mean by the
profitable the gainful or that which pays (luei) the retailer, but
they use the word in the sense of swift. You regard the profitable
(lusiteloun), as that which being the swiftest thing in existence,
allows of no stay in things and no pause or end of motion, 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 appears to
me, the good is happily denominated lusiteloun--being that which looses
(luon) the end (telos) of motion. Ophelimon (the advantageous) is
derived from ophellein, meaning that which creates and increases; this
latter is a common Homeric 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); for aptein is the same as dein, and dein is always a term
of censure; boulomenon aptein roun (wanting to bind the stream) would
properly be boulapteroun, and this, as I imagine, is improved into
blaberon.
HERMOGENES: You bring out curious results, Socrates, in the use of
names; and when I hear the word boulapteroun I cannot help imagining
that you are making your 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,
how right I was in saying that great changes are made in the meaning
of words by putting in and pulling out letters; even a very slight
permutation will sometimes give an entirely opposite sense; I may
instance the word deon, which occurs 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 disguised and 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 the sounds iota and delta, especially the women, who are most
conservative of the ancient language, but now they change iota into
eta or epsilon, and delta into zeta; 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
imera or 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 the giver of the name? of which the reason is, that men long for
(imeirousi) and love 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 makes things 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, which
word expresses the binding of two together (duein agoge) for the purpose
of drawing;--this has been changed into zugon, and there are many other
examples of similar changes.
HERMOGENES: There are.
SOCRATES: Proceeding in the same train of thought I may remark that the
word deon (obligation) has a meaning which is the opposite of all the
other appellations of good; for deon is here a species of good, and is,
nevertheless, the chain (desmos) or hinderer of motion, and therefore
own brother of blaberon.
HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates; that is quite plain.
SOCRATES: Not if you restore the ancient form, which is more likely to
be the correct one, and read dion instead of deon; if you convert the
epsilon into an iota after the old fashion, this word will then agree
with other words meaning good; for dion, not deon, signifies the good,
and is a term of praise; and the author of names has not contradicted
himself, but in all these various appellations, deon (obligatory),
ophelimon (advantageous), lusiteloun (profitable), kerdaleon (gainful),
agathon (good), sumpheron (expedient), euporon (plenteous), the same
conception is implied of the ordering or all-pervading principle which
is praised, and the restraining and binding principle which is censured.
And this is further illustrated by the word zemiodes (hurtful), which if
the zeta is only changed into delta as in the ancient language, becomes
demiodes; and this name, as you will perceive, is given 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
about them--edone is e (eta) onesis, the action which tends to
advantage; and the original form may be supposed to have been eone, but
this has been altered by 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 of motion (alpha and ienai); algedon
(distress), if I am not mistaken, is a foreign word, which is derived
from aleinos (grievous); odune (grief) is called from the putting on
(endusis) sorrow; in achthedon (vexation) 'the word too labours,' as
any one may see; chara (joy) is the very expression of the fluency and
diffusion of the soul (cheo); terpsis (delight) is so called from the
pleasure creeping (erpon) through the soul, which may be likened to a
breath (pnoe) and is properly erpnoun, but has been altered by time into
terpnon; eupherosune (cheerfulness) and epithumia explain themselves;
the former, which ought to be eupherosune and has been changed
euphrosune, is named, as every one may see, from the soul moving
(pheresthai) in harmony with nature; epithumia is really e epi ton
thumon iousa dunamis, the power which enters into the soul; thumos
(passion) is called from the rushing (thuseos) and boiling of the soul;
imeros (desire) denotes the stream (rous) which most draws the soul dia
ten esin tes roes--because flowing with desire (iemenos), and expresses
a longing after things and violent attraction of the soul to them,
and is termed imeros from possessing this power; pothos (longing) is
expressive of 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, as imeros is to things present; eros (love) is so
called because flowing in (esron) from without; the stream is not
inherent, but is an influence introduced through the eyes, and from
flowing in was called esros (influx) in the old time when they used
omicron for omega, and is called eros, now that omega 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 march of 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 only oisis (moving), and implies the movement of
the soul to the essential nature of each thing--just as boule (counsel)
has to do with shooting (bole); and boulesthai (to wish) combines the
notion of aiming and deliberating--all these words seem to follow
doxa, and all involve the idea of shooting, just as aboulia, absence of
counsel, on the other hand, is a mishap, or missing, or mistaking 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 have explained anagke (necessity), which ought to come next, and
ekousion (the voluntary). Ekousion is certainly the yielding (eikon) and
unresisting--the notion implied is yielding and not opposing, yielding,
as I was just now saying, to that motion which is in accordance with
our will; but the necessary and resistant being contrary to our will,
implies error and ignorance; the idea is taken from walking through
a ravine which is impassable, and rugged, and overgrown, and impedes
motion--and this is the derivation of the word anagkaion (necessary)
an agke ion, going through a ravine. But while my strength lasts let us
persevere, and I hope that you will persevere with your questions.
HERMOGENES: Well, then, let me ask about the greatest and noblest,
such as aletheia (truth) and pseudos (falsehood) and on (being), not
forgetting to enquire why the word onoma (name), which is the theme of
our discussion, has this 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 ou zetema (being for which there is a search); as is still more
obvious in onomaston (notable), which states in so many words that real
existence is that for which there is a seeking (on ou masma); aletheia
is also an agglomeration of theia ale (divine wandering), implying
the divine motion of existence; pseudos (falsehood) is the opposite of
motion; here is another ill name given by 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 of psi; on
and ousia are ion with an iota broken off; this agrees with the true
principle, for being (on) is also moving (ion), and the same may be said
of not being, which is likewise called not going (oukion or ouki on =
ouk ion).
HERMOGENES: You have hammered away at them manfully; but suppose that
some one were to say to you, what is the word ion, and what are reon and
doun?--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 already
suggested.
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 be true of them; but also the original forms of words may have
been lost in the lapse of ages; names have been so twisted in all
manner of ways, that I should not be surprised if the old language
when compared with that now in use would appear to us to be a barbarous
tongue.
HERMOGENES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: Yes, very likely. But still the enquiry demands our earnest
attention and we must not flinch. For we should remember, that if a
person go on analysing names into words, and enquiring also into
the elements out of which the words are formed, and keeps on always
repeating this process, he who has to answer 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 other names 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 of agastos (admirable) and thoos (swift).
And probably thoos is made up of other elements, and these again of
others. But if we take a word which is incapable of further resolution,
then we shall be right in saying that we have at last reached 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 out to be primary elements, must not their truth or law be examined
according to some new method?
HERMOGENES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: Quite so, Hermogenes; all that has preceded would lead to this
conclusion. And if, as I think, the conclusion is true, then I shall
again say to you, come and help me, that I may not fall into some
absurdity in stating the 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
is applicable to all names, primary as well as secondary--when they are
regarded simply as names, there is no difference in them.
HERMOGENES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: All the names that we have been explaining were intended to
indicate the nature of things.
HERMOGENES: Of course.
SOCRATES: And that this is true of the primary quite as much as of the
secondary names, is implied in their being names.
HERMOGENES: Surely.
SOCRATES: But the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance
from the primary.
HERMOGENES: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Very good; but then how do the primary names which precede
analysis show the natures of things, as far as they can be shown; which
they must do, if they are to be real names? And here I will ask you
a question: Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to
communicate with one another, should we not, like the deaf and dumb,
make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body?
HERMOGENES: There would be no choice, Socrates.
SOCRATES: We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of
our hands to heaven would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and
downwardness would be expressed by letting them drop to the ground;
if we were describing the running of a horse, or any other animal, we
should make our bodies and their gestures 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
express anything.
HERMOGENES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And when we want to express ourselves, either with the voice,
or tongue, or mouth, the expression is simply their imitation of that
which we want to express.
HERMOGENES: It must be so, I think.
SOCRATES: Then a name is a vocal imitation of that which the vocal
imitator names or imitates?
HERMOGENES: I think so.
SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, I am disposed to think that we have not
reached the truth as yet.
HERMOGENES: Why not?
SOCRATES: Because if we have we shall be obliged to admit that the
people who imitate 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,
although that is also vocal; nor, again, an imitation of what music
imitates; these, in my judgment, would not be naming. Let me put the
matter as follows: All objects have sound and figure, and many have
colour?
HERMOGENES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But the art of naming appears not to be concerned with
imitations of this 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
a colour, or sound? And is there not an essence of colour and sound as
well as of anything 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
in letters 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 the two other imitators. What will this imitator be called?
HERMOGENES: I imagine, Socrates, that he must be the namer, or
name-giver, of whom we are in search.
SOCRATES: If this is true, then I think that we are in a condition to
consider the names ron (stream), ienai (to go), schesis (retention),
about which you were asking; and we may see whether the namer has
grasped the nature of them in letters 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 where does the imitator begin? Imitation of the essence is made by
syllables and letters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the
letters, just as those who are beginning rhythm first distinguish the
powers of elementary, and then of compound sounds, and when they have
done so, but not before, they proceed to the consideration of rhythms?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first
separating the vowels, and then the consonants and mutes (letters which
are neither vowels nor semivowels), into classes, according to the
received distinctions of the learned; also the semivowels, which are
neither vowels, nor yet mutes; and distinguishing into classes the
vowels themselves? And when we have perfected the classification of
things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the 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, whether
they have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have
well considered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what they
resemble--whether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether
there is to be an admixture of several of them; just, as in painting,
the painter who wants to depict anything sometimes uses purple only, or
any other colour, and sometimes mixes up several colours, as his method
is when he has to paint flesh colour or anything of that kind--he uses
his colours as his figures appear to require them; and so, too, we shall
apply letters to the expression of objects, either single letters when
required, or several letters; and so we shall form syllables, as they
are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at last,
from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large and
fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even so shall we make
speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other
art. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried
away--meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) the
ancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to
pieces in like manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the
whole subject, and we must see whether the primary, and also whether the
secondary elements are rightly given or not, for if they are not, the
composition of them, my dear Hermogenes, 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
in this 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 of preface, as I said before of the Gods, that of the
truth about them we know nothing, and do but entertain human notions of
them. And in this present enquiry, let us say to ourselves, before we
proceed, that the higher method is the one which we or others who
would analyse language to any good purpose must follow; 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 find expression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be
avoided--there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth
of first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help,
like the tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their gods waiting in
the air; and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying
that 'the Gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right.' This
will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even
better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the
barbarians are older than we are; or we may say that antiquity has cast
a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as the last; for all
these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons
concerning the truth of words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or
primitive names involves an ignorance of secondary words; for they
can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then the professor of
languages should be able to give a very lucid explanation of first
names, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest.
Do you not 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 that you 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
general instrument expressing all motion (kinesis). But I have not yet
explained the meaning of this latter word, which is just iesis (going);
for the letter eta was not in use among the ancients, who only employed
epsilon; and the root is kiein, which is a foreign form, the same as
ienai. And the old word kinesis will be correctly given as iesis in
corresponding modern letters. Assuming this foreign root kiein, and
allowing for the change of the eta and the insertion of the nu, we have
kinesis, which should have been kieinsis or eisis; and stasis is the
negative of ienai (or eisis), and has been improved into stasis. Now
the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an
excellent instrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently
uses the letter for this purpose: for example, in the actual words
rein and roe he represents motion by rho; also in the words tromos
(trembling), trachus (rugged); and again, in words such as krouein
(strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise), thruptein (break),
kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sorts of movements
he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as I imagine,
he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in
the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order
to express motion, just as by the letter iota he expresses the subtle
elements which pass through 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; these are used in the
imitation of such notions as psuchron (shivering), xeon (seething),
seiesthai, (to be shaken), seismos (shock), and are always introduced 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 tongue in
the utterance of delta and tau was expressive of binding and rest in
a place: he further observed the liquid movement of lambda, in the
pronunciation of 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 gamma detained the slipping
tongue, and the union of the two gave the notion of a glutinous clammy
nature, as in glischros, glukus, gloiodes. The nu he observed to be
sounded from within, and therefore to have a notion of inwardness; hence
he introduced the sound in endos and entos: alpha he assigned to the
expression of size, and nu of length, because they are great letters:
omicron was the sign of roundness, and therefore there is plenty of
omicron mixed up in the word goggulon (round). Thus did the legislator,
reducing all things into letters and syllables, and impressing on them
names and signs, and out of them by imitation compounding 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 this fitness, so that I cannot tell whether his
obscurity is intended or not. Tell me now, Cratylus, here in the
presence of Socrates, do you agree in what Socrates 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 of Socrates,
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 such a subject as language, which is, perhaps, the very
greatest of all.
HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but, as Hesiod says, and I agree with him, 'to
add little to little' is worth while. And, therefore, if you think that
you can add anything at all, however small, to our knowledge, take a
little trouble 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 and myself 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 not be at all surprized to find that you
have found some better notion. For you have evidently reflected on these
matters and have had teachers, and if you have really a better theory of
the truth of names, you may count me in the number of your disciples.
CRATYLUS: You are right, Socrates, in saying that I have made a study of
these matters, and I might possibly convert you into a disciple. But I
fear that the opposite is more probable, and I already find myself moved
to say to you what Achilles in the 'Prayers' says to Ajax,--
'Illustrious Ajax, son of Telamon, lord of the people, You appear to
have spoken in all things much to my mind.'
And you, Socrates, appear to me to be an oracle, and to give answers
much to my mind, whether you are inspired by Euthyphro, or whether some
Muse may have long been an inhabitant of your breast, unconsciously to
yourself.
SOCRATES: Excellent Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own
wisdom; I cannot trust myself. And I think that I ought to stop and
ask myself What am I saying? for there is nothing worse than
self-deception--when the deceiver is always at home and always with
you--it is quite terrible, and therefore I ought often to retrace
my steps and endeavour to 'look fore and aft,' in the words of the
aforesaid Homer. And now let me see; where are we? Have we not been
saying that the correct name indicates the nature of the thing:--has
this proposition been sufficiently proven?
CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, what you say, as I am disposed to think, is
quite true.
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
explain what 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 sort build fairer houses, and the worse build them worse.
CRATYLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And among legislators, there are some who do their work better
and some 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 was mentioned before:--assuming that he has nothing of the nature
of Hermes in him, 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
only appears to be his, and is really the name of somebody else, who has
the nature which corresponds to it.
SOCRATES: And if a man were to call him Hermogenes, would he not be
even speaking 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 your meaning 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?--say
something and yet say nothing? For is not falsehood saying the thing
which is not?
SOCRATES: Your argument, friend, is too subtle for a man of my age.
But I should like to know whether you are one of those philosophers who
think that falsehood may be spoken but not said?
CRATYLUS: Neither spoken nor said.
SOCRATES: Nor uttered nor addressed? For example: If a person, saluting
you in a foreign country, were to take your hand and say: 'Hail,
Athenian stranger, Hermogenes, son of Smicrion'--these words, whether
spoken, said, uttered, or addressed, would have no application to you
but only to our friend 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
me whether the nonsense would be true or false, or partly true and
partly false:--which is all that I want to know.
CRATYLUS: I should say that he would be putting himself in motion to no
purpose; and that his words would be an unmeaning sound like the noise
of hammering at a brazen pot.
SOCRATES: But let us see, Cratylus, whether we cannot find a
meeting-point, for you 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 of the thing?
CRATYLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you would say that pictures are also imitations of things,
but in another 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 or words) are not equally attributable and applicable to the
things of which they are the imitation.
CRATYLUS: They are.
SOCRATES: First look at the matter thus: you may attribute the likeness
of the man 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
the woman, 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 that which 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
good understanding about the argument, let me state my view to you: the
first mode of assignment, whether applied to figures or to names, I call
right, and when applied to names only, true as well as right; and the
other mode of giving and assigning 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
be wrongly 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 perhaps
the likeness of a woman; and when I say 'show,' I mean bring before the
sense of sight.
CRATYLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And may I not go to him again, and say, 'This is your
name'?--for the name, like the picture, is an imitation. May I not say
to him--'This is your name'? and may I not then bring to his sense of
hearing the imitation of himself, when I say, 'This is a man'; or of a
female of the human species, when I say, 'This is a woman,' 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 be
disputed 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 of them falsehood. Now if there be such a wrong assignment of
names, there may also be a wrong or inappropriate assignment of verbs;
and if of names and verbs then 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
in pictures you may either give all the appropriate colours and figures,
or you may not give them all--some may be wanting; or there may be too
many or too much of them--may there not?
CRATYLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And he who gives all gives a perfect picture or figure; and
he who takes 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
nature of things, if he gives all that is appropriate will produce a
good image, or in other words a name; but if he subtracts or perhaps
adds a little, he will make an image but not a good one; whence I infer
that some names are well and others ill 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 any other letters to a certain name, then, if we add, or
subtract, or misplace a letter, the name which is written is not only
written wrongly, but not written at 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 be just what they are, or not be at all; for example, the number
ten at once becomes other than ten if a unit be added or subtracted,
and so of any other number: but this does not apply to that which is
qualitative or to anything which is represented under an image. I should
say rather that the image, if expressing in every point the entire
reality, would no longer be an image. Let us suppose the existence of
two objects: one of them shall be Cratylus, and the other the image of
Cratylus; and we will suppose, further, that some God makes not only
a representation such as a painter would make of your outward form and
colour, but also creates an inward organization like yours, having the
same warmth and softness; and into this infuses motion, and soul, and
mind, such as you have, and in a word copies all your qualities, and
places them by you in another 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 of truth in images, and also in names; and not insist that an
image is no longer an image when something is added or subtracted. Do
you not perceive that images are very far from having qualities which
are the exact counterpart of the realities which they represent?
CRATYLUS: Yes, I see.
SOCRATES: But then how ridiculous would be the effect of names on
things, if they 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 the realities.
CRATYLUS: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Then fear not, but have the courage to admit that one name may
be correctly and another incorrectly given; and do not insist that the
name shall be exactly the same with the thing; but allow the occasional
substitution of a wrong letter, and if of a letter also of a noun in a
sentence, and if of a noun in a sentence also of a sentence which is not
appropriate to the matter, and acknowledge that the thing may be named,
and described, so long as the general character of the thing which you
are describing is retained; and this, as you will remember, was remarked
by Hermogenes and myself in the particular instance of the names of the
letters.
CRATYLUS: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: Good; and when the general character is preserved, even
if some of the proper letters are wanting, still the thing is
signified;--well, if all the letters are given; not well, when only a
few of them are given. I think that we had better admit this, lest we be
punished like travellers in Aegina who wander about the street late at
night: and be likewise told by truth herself that we have arrived too
late; or if not, you must find out some new notion of correctness of
names, and no longer maintain that a name is the expression of a thing
in letters or syllables; for if you say both, you will be inconsistent
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
name rightly 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 are incorrectly given, the greater part may be supposed to be made
up of proper and similar letters, or there would be no likeness; but
there will be likewise a part which is improper and spoils the beauty
and formation of the word: you would admit that?
CRATYLUS: There would be no use, Socrates, in my quarrelling with you,
since I cannot 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
representations of things, is there any better way of framing
representations than by assimilating them to the objects as much as you
can; or do you prefer the notion 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 previous knowledge of the things
intended by them, and that convention is the only principle; and whether
you abide by our present convention, or make a new and opposite one,
according to which you call small great and great small--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
than representation by any chance sign.
SOCRATES: Very good: but if the name is to be like the thing, the
letters out of which the first names are composed must also be like
things. Returning to the image of the picture, I would ask, How could
any one ever compose a picture which would be like anything at all, if
there were not pigments in nature which resembled the things imitated,
and out of which the picture is composed?
CRATYLUS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: No more could names ever resemble any actually existing thing,
unless the original elements of which they are compounded bore some
degree of resemblance to the objects of which the names are the
imitation: And the original elements are letters?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Let me now invite you to consider what Hermogenes and I
were saying about sounds. Do you agree with me that the letter rho is
expressive of rapidity, 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
the like?
CRATYLUS: There again you were right.
SOCRATES: And yet, as you are aware, that which is called by us
sklerotes, is by the Eretrians called skleroter.
CRATYLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: But are the letters rho and sigma equivalents; and is there
the same significance to them in the termination rho, which there is to
us in sigma, or is 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 is
expressive not of hardness but of softness.
CRATYLUS: Why, perhaps the letter lamda is wrongly inserted, Socrates,
and should be altered into rho, as you were saying to Hermogenes and
in my opinion rightly, when you spoke of adding and subtracting letters
upon occasion.
SOCRATES: Good. But still the word is intelligible to both of us; when I
say skleros (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 I
understand, and you know that I understand the meaning of the sound:
this is what you are saying?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if when I speak you know my meaning, there is an
indication given by me to you?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: This indication of my meaning may proceed from unlike as well
as from like, for example in the lamda of sklerotes. But if this is
true, then you have made a convention with yourself, and the correctness
of a name turns out to be convention, since letters which are unlike are
indicative equally with those which are like, if they are sanctioned by
custom and convention. And even supposing that you distinguish custom
from convention ever so much, still you must say that the signification
of words is given by custom and not by likeness, for custom may indicate
by the unlike as well as by the like. But as we are agreed thus far,
Cratylus (for I shall assume that your silence gives consent), then
custom and convention must be supposed to contribute to the indication
of our thoughts; for suppose we take the instance of number, how can you
ever imagine, my good friend, that you will find names resembling every
individual number, unless you allow that which you term convention and
agreement to have authority in determining the correctness of names?
I quite agree with you that words should as far as possible resemble
things; but I fear that 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 to correctness; for I believe that if
we could always, or almost always, use likenesses, which are perfectly
appropriate, this would be the most perfect state 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:
the simple truth is, that he who knows names knows also the things which
are expressed by them.
SOCRATES: I suppose you mean to say, Cratylus, that as the name is,
so also is the thing; and that he who knows the one will also know the
other, because they are similars, and all similars fall under the same
art or science; and therefore 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
about things which, according to you, is given us by names. Is it the
best sort of information? or is there any other? What do you say?
CRATYLUS: I believe that to be both the only and the best sort of
information about them; there can be no other.
SOCRATES: But do you believe that in the discovery of them, he who
discovers the 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 of the same nature as instruction.
SOCRATES: Well, but do you not see, Cratylus, that he who follows names
in the search after things, and analyses their meaning, is in great
danger of being deceived?
CRATYLUS: How so?
SOCRATES: Why clearly he who first gave names gave them according to his
conception of the things which they signified--did he not?
CRATYLUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if his conception was erroneous, and he gave names
according to his 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
have known; or else, as I was saying, his names would not be names at
all? And you have a clear proof that he has not missed the truth, and
the proof is--that he is perfectly consistent. Did you ever observe in
speaking that all the words which you utter have a common character and
purpose?
SOCRATES: But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin
in error, he may have forced the remainder into agreement with the
original error and with himself; there would be nothing strange in this,
any more than in geometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and
invisible flaw in the first part of the process, and are consistently
mistaken in the long deductions which follow. And this is the reason
why every man should expend his chief thought and attention on the
consideration of his first principles:--are they or are they not rightly
laid down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow.
Now I should be astonished to find that names are really consistent. And
here let us revert to our former discussion: Were we not saying that all
things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea of motion
is expressed by names? Do you not conceive that to be the meaning of
them?
CRATYLUS: Yes; that is assuredly their meaning, and the true meaning.
SOCRATES: Let us revert to episteme (knowledge) and observe how
ambiguous this word is, seeming rather to signify stopping the soul at
things than going round with them; and therefore we should leave
the beginning as at present, and not reject the epsilon, but make an
insertion of an iota instead of an epsilon (not pioteme, but epiisteme).
Take another example: bebaion (sure) is clearly the expression 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; and the word piston (faithful) certainly indicates cessation of
motion; then, again, mneme (memory), as any one may see, expresses
rest in the soul, and not motion. 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 and episteme and other
words which have a good sense (compare omartein, sunienai, epesthai,
sumpheresthai); and much the same may be said of amathia and akolasia,
for amathia may be explained as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia
as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the names which in these instances
we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to be framed on the same
principle as those which have the best. And any one I believe who would
take the trouble might find many other examples in which the giver of
names indicates, not that things are in motion or progress, but that
they are at rest; 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
is correctness of names the voice of the majority? Are we to say of
whichever sort there 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 to another, about which I should like to know whether you think
with me. Were we not lately acknowledging that the first givers of names
in states, both Hellenic and barbarous, were the legislators, and that
the art which gave names was the art of the legislator?
CRATYLUS: Quite true.
SOCRATES: Tell me, then, did the first legislators, who were the givers
of the first 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 he named; are you still of that opinion?
CRATYLUS: I am.
SOCRATES: And would you say that the giver of the first names had also a
knowledge of the things which he named?
CRATYLUS: I should.
SOCRATES: But how could he have learned or discovered things from names
if the primitive names were not yet given? For, if we are correct in
our view, the only way of learning and discovering things, is either to
discover names for ourselves 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 suppose that the givers of names had knowledge, or were legislators
before there were names at all, and therefore before they could have
known them?
CRATYLUS: I believe, Socrates, the true account of the matter to be,
that a power more than human gave things their first names, and that the
names which are thus given are necessarily their true names.
SOCRATES: Then how came the giver of the names, if he was an inspired
being or God, to contradict himself? For were we not saying just now
that he made some names 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 are
expressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion? This is a
point which, 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
they are like the truth, others contending that THEY are, how or by what
criterion are we to decide between them? For there are no other names to
which appeal can be made, but obviously recourse must be had to another
standard which, without employing names, will make clear which of the
two are right; and this must be a standard which shows the truth of
things.
CRATYLUS: I agree.
SOCRATES: But if that is true, Cratylus, then I suppose that things may
be known without names?
CRATYLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can
there be of knowing them, except the true and natural way, through their
affinities, when they are akin to each other, and through themselves?
For that which is other and 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
names rightly 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
things through the medium of names, and suppose also that you can learn
them from the things themselves--which is likely to be the nobler and
clearer way; to learn of the image, whether the image and the truth of
which the image is the expression have been rightly conceived, or to
learn of the truth whether the truth 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 is not to be derived from names. No; they must be studied and
investigated in themselves.
CRATYLUS: Clearly, Socrates.
SOCRATES: There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed
upon by the 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 the idea that all things were in motion and flux; which
was their sincere but, I think, 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 your opinion: Tell me, whether
there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any 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 let us 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 and vanish 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 the same; and if they are always the same and in the same state,
and never depart from 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
the observer approaches, then they become other and of another nature,
so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for
you cannot know that 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; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless
continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of
knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no
knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always
be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to
know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is
known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing
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 himself or the education of his mind in
the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers
of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and
other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe
that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who
has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very
likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily
persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept
such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you
have found the truth, come and tell me.
CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that
I have been considering the matter already, and the result of a great
deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.
SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall
give me a lesson; but at present, go into the country, as you are
intending, and Hermogenes shall set you on your way.
CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue
to think about these things yourself.
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