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Cratylus

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Title: Cratylus

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett


        
Release date: January 1, 1999 [eBook #1616]
                Most recently updated: April 27, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1616

Credits: Sue Asscher


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CRATYLUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett


Contents

 INTRODUCTION
 CRATYLUS




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.[1]

 [1] Compare W. Humboldt, _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen
 Sprachbaues_, and M. Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Language_.



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, inexpressive, 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.[2]

 [2] Compare again W. Humboldt, _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des
 menschlichen Sprachbaues_; M. Müller, _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 

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