XXX. POLITIKUS…

XXX. POLITIKUS

[Side-note: The Politikus by itself, apart from the Sophistês.]

I have examined in the preceding sections both that which the Sophistês and Politikus present in common--(viz. a lesson, as well as a partial theory, of the logical processes called Definition and Division)--and that which Sophistês presents apart from the Politikus. I now advert to two matters which we find in the Politikus, but not in the Sophistês. Both of them will be found to illustrate the Platonic mode of philosophising.

[Side-note: Views of Plato on mensuration. Objects measured against each other. Objects compared with a common standard. In each Art, the purpose to be attained is the standard.]

I. Plato assumes, that there will be critics who blame the two dialogues as too long and circuitous; excessive in respect of prolixity. In replying to those objectors,[1] he enquires, What is meant by long or short--excessive or deficient--great or little? Such expressions denote mensuration or comparison. But there are two varieties of mensuration. We may measure two objects one against the other: the first will be called great or greater, in relation to the second--the second will be called little or less in relation to the first. But we may also proceed in a different way. We may assume some third object as a standard, and then measure both the two against it: declaring the first to be great, greater, excessive, &c., because it exceeds the standard--and the second to be little, less, deficient, &c., because it falls short of the standard. Here then are two judgments or estimations altogether different from each other, and yet both denoted by the same words great and little: two distinct essences (in Platonic phrase) of great and little, or of greatness and littleness.[2] The art of mensuration has thus two varieties. One includes arithmetic and geometry, where we simply compare numbers and magnitudes with each other, determining the proportions between them: the other assumes some independent standard; above which is excess, and below which is deficiency. This standard passes by different names according to circumstances: the Moderate, Becoming, Seasonable, Proper, Obligatory, &c.[3] Such a standard is assumed in every art--in every artistic or scientific course of procedure. Every art has an end to be attained, a result to be produced; which serves as the standard whereby each preparatory step of the artist is measured, and pronounced to be either excessive or deficient, as the case may be.[4] Unless such a standard be assumed, you cannot have regular art or science of any kind; neither in grave matters, nor in vulgar matters--neither in the government of society, nor in the weaving of cloth.[5]

[Footnote 1: The treatment of this subject begins, Politik. p. 283 C, where Plato intimates that the coming remarks are of wide application.]

[Footnote 2: Plato, Politik. p. 283 E. [Greek: di/ttas a)/ra tau/tas ou)si/as kai\ kri/seis tou= mega/lou kai\ tou= smikrou= thete/on.]]

[Footnote 3: Plato, Politik. p. 284 E. [Greek: to\ me/trion, to\ pre/pon, to\n kairo/n, to\ de/on], &c.

The reader will find these two varieties of mensuration, here distinguished by Plato, illustrated in the "two distinct modes of appreciating weight" (the Absolute and the Relative), described and explained by Professor Alexander Bain in his work on The Senses and The Intellect, 3rd edition, p. 93. This explanation forms an item in the copious enumeration given by Mr. Bain of the fundamental sensations of our nature.]

[Footnote 4: Plato, Politik. p. 283 D. [Greek: kata\ tê\n tê=s gene/seôs a)nagkai/an ou)si/an].--284 A-C. [Greek: pro\s tê\n tou= metri/ou ge/nesin].]

[Footnote 5: Plato, Politik. p. 284 C.]

[Side-note: Purpose in the Sophistês and Politikus is--To attain dialectic aptitude. This is the standard of comparison whereby to judge whether the means employed are suitable.]

Now what is the end to be attained, by this our enquiry into the definition of a Statesman? It is not so much to solve the particular question started, as to create in ourselves dialectic talent and aptitude, applicable to every thing. This is the standard with reference to which our enquiry must be criticised--not by regard to the easy solution of the particular problem, or to the immediate pleasure of the hearer. And if an objector complains, that our exposition is too long or our subject-matters too vulgar--we shall require him to show that the proposed end might have been attained with fewer words and with more solemn illustrations. If he cannot show this, we shall disregard his censure as inapplicable.[6]

[Footnote 6: Plato, Politik. pp. 286 D, 287 A. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 36 D.]

[Side-note: Plato's defence of the Politikus against critics. Necessity that the critic shall declare explicitly what his standard of comparison is.]

The above-mentioned distinction between the two varieties of mensuration or comparison, is here given by Plato, simply to serve as a defence against critics who censured the peculiarities of the Politikus. It is not pursued into farther applications. But it deserves notice, not merely as being in itself just and useful, but as illustrating one of the many phases of Plato's philosophy. It is an exhibition of the relative side of Plato's character, as contra-distinguished from the absolute or dogmatical: for both the two, opposed as they are to each other, co-exist in him and manifest themselves alternately. It conveys a valuable lesson as to the apportionment of praise and blame. "When you blame me" (he says to his critics), "you must have in your mind some standard of comparison upon which the blame turns. Declare what that standard is:--what you mean by the Proper, Becoming, Moderate, &c. There is such a standard, and a different one, in every different Art. What is it here? You must choose this standard, explain what it is, and adhere to it when you undertake to praise or blame." Such an enunciation (thoroughly Sokratic[7]) of the principle of relativity, brings before critics the fact--which is very apt to be forgotten--that there must exist in the mind of each some standard of comparison, varying or unvarying, well or ill understood: while at the same time it enforces upon them the necessity of determining clearly for themselves, and announcing explicitly to others, what that standard is. Otherwise the propositions, affirming comparison, can have no uniform meaning with any two debaters, nor even with the same man at different times.

[Footnote 7: Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 8, 7, iii. 10, 12.]

[Side-note: Comparison of Politikus with Protagoras, Phædon, Philêbus, &c.]

To this relative side of Plato's mind belong his frequent commendations of measurement, numbering, computation, comparison, &c. In the Protagoras,[8] he describes the art of measurement as the main guide and protector of human life: it is there treated as applicable to the correct estimation of pleasures and pains. In the Phædon,[9] it is again extolled: though the elements to be calculated are there specified differently. In the Philêbus, the antithesis of [Greek: Pe/ras] and [Greek: A)/peiron] (the Determinant or Limit, and the Indeterminate or Infinite) is one of the leading points of the dialogue. We read in it moreover a bipartite division of Mensuration or Arithmetic,[10] which is quite different from the bipartite division just cited out of the Politikus. Plato divides it there (in the Philêbus) into arithmetic for theorists, and arithmetic for practical life: besides which, he distinguishes the various practical arts as being more or less accurate, according as they have more or less of measurement and sensible comparison in them. Thus the art of the carpenter, who employs measuring instruments such as the line and rule--is more accurate than that of the physician, general, pilot, husbandman, &c., who have no similar means of measuring. This is a classification quite different from what we find in the Politikus; yet tending in like manner to illustrate the relative point of view, and its frequent manifestation in Plato. In the Politikus, he seeks to refer praise and blame to a standard of measurement, instead of suffering them to be mere outbursts of sentiment unsystematic and unanalysed.

[Footnote 8: Plato, Protagor. p. 357 B.]

[Footnote 9: Plato, Phædon, p. 69 B.]

[Footnote 10: Plato, Philêbus, pp. 25 C, 27 D, 57. [Greek: du/o a)rithmêtikai\ kai\ du/o metrêtikai/ . . . tê\n didumo/têta e)/chousai tau/tên, o)no/matos de\ e(no\s kekoinôme/nai.]

This same bipartition, however, is noticed in another passage of the Politikus, p. 258 D-E.]

[Side-note: Definition of the statesman, or Governor. Scientific competence. Sokratic point of departure. Procedure of Plato in subdividing.]

II. The second peculiarity to which I call attention in the Politikus, is the definition or description there furnished of the character so-called: that is, the Statesman, the King, Governor, Director, or Manager, of human society. At the outset of the dialogue, this person is declared to belong to the Genus--Men of Science or of Art (the two words are faintly distinguished in Plato). It is possession of the proper amount of scientific competence which constitutes a man a Governor: and which entitles him to be so named, whether he actually governs any society or not.[11] (This point of departure is purely Sokratic: for in the Memorabilia of Xenophon,[12] Sokrates makes the same express declaration.) The King knows, but does not act: yet he is not a simple critic or spectator--he gives orders: and those orders are not suggested to him by any one else (as in the case of the Herald, the Keleustês, and others),[13] but spring from his own bosom and his own knowledge. From thence Plato carries us through a series of descending logical subdivisions, until we come to define the King as the shepherd and feeder of the flock of human beings.[14] But many other persons, besides the King, are concerned in feeding the human flock, and will therefore be included in this definition: which is thus proved to be too large, and to require farther qualification and restriction.[15] Moreover the feeding of the human flock belongs to others rather than to the King. He tends and takes care of the flock, but does not feed it: hence the definition is, in this way also, unsuitable.[16]

[Footnote 11: Plato, Politikus, pp. 258 B, 259 B.]

[Footnote 12: Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 13: Plato, Politik. p. 260 C-E. [Greek: to\ me\n tô=n basile/ôn ge/nos ei)s tê\n au)tepitaktikê\n the/ntes], &c.]

[Footnote 14: Plato, Politik. pp. 267 B, 268 C.]

[Footnote 15: Plato, Politik. p. 268.]

[Footnote 16: Plato, Politik. p. 275 D-E.]

[Side-note: King during the Saturnian period, was of a breed superior to the people--not so any longer.]

Our mistake (says Plato) was of this kind. In describing the King or Governor, we have unconsciously fallen upon the description of the King, such as he was in the Saturnian period or under the presidency of Kronus; and not such as he is in the present period. Under the presidency of Kronus, each human flock was tended and governed by a divine King or God, who managed every thing for it, keeping it happy and comfortable by his own unassisted agency: the entire Kosmos too, with its revolutions, was at that time under the immediate guidance of a divine mover. But in the present period this divine superintendance is withdrawn: both the entire Kosmos, and each separate portion of it, is left to its own movement, full of imperfection and irregularity. Each human flock is now tended not by a divine King, as it was then; but by a human King, much less perfect, less effective, less exalted above the constituent members. Now the definition which we fell upon (says Plato) suited the King of the Saturnian period; but does not suit the King of the present or human period.[17] At the first commencement of the present period, the human flock, left to themselves without superintendance from the Gods, suffered great misery: but various presents from some Gods (fire from Prometheus, arts from Hephæstus and Athênê, plants and seeds from Dêmêtêr) rendered their condition more endurable, though still full of difficulty and hardship.[18]

[Footnote 17: Plato, Politik. pp. 274-275 B.]

[Footnote 18: Plato, Politik. p. 274 C.

Plato embodies these last-mentioned comparisons in an elaborate and remarkable mythe--theological, cosmical, zoological, social--which occupies six pages of the Politikus (268 D--274 E). Meiners and Socher (Ueber Platon's Schriften, pp. 273-275) point out that the theology of Plato in this fable differs much from what we read in the Phædon, Republic, &c.: and Socher insists upon such discrepancy as one of his arguments against the genuineness of the Politikus. I have already observed that I do not concur in his inference. I do not expect uniformity of doctrine in the various Platonic dialogues: more especially on a subject so much beyond experience, and so completely open to the conjectures of a rich imagination, as theology and cosmogony. In the Sophistês, pp. 242-243, Plato had talked in a sort of contemptuous tone about those who dealt with philosophical doctrine in the way of mythe, as a proceeding fit only for boys: (not unlike the manner of Aristotle, when he speaks of [Greek: oi( muthikô=s sophizo/menoi--ta\ u(pe\r ê(ma=s], Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 15-18, [Greek: L]. 1071, b. 27): while here, in the Politikus, he dilates upon what he admits to be a boyish mythe, partly because a certain portion of it may be made available in illustration of his philosophical purpose, partly because he wishes to enliven the monotony of a long-continued classification. Again, in the Phædrus (**p. 229 C), the Platonic Sokrates is made to censure as futile any attempt to find rational explanations for the popular legends ([Greek: sophi/zesthai]): but here, in the Politikus, the Eleate expressly adapts his theory about the backward and forward rotation of the Kosmos to the explanation of the popular legends--about earthborn men, and about Helios turning back his chariot, in order to escape the shocking spectacle of the Thyestean banquet: which legends, when so explained, Plato declares that people would be wrong to disbelieve ([Greek: oi( nu=n u(po\ pollô=n ou)k o)rthô=s a)pistou=ntai], pp. 271 B, 268 A, B, C).

The differences of doctrine and handling, between the various Platonic dialogues, are facts not less worthy to be noted than the similarities. Here, in the mythe of the Politikus, we find a peculiar theological view, and a very remarkable cosmical doctrine--the rotation and counter-rotation of the Kosmos. The Kosmos is here declared (as in the Timæus) to be a living and intelligent Subject; having received these mental gifts from its Demiurgus. But the Kosmos is also Body as well as Mind; so that it is incapable of that constant sameness or uniformity which belongs to the Divine: Body having in itself an incurable principle of disorder (p. 269 D). The Kosmos is perpetually in movement; but its movement is only rotatory or circular in the same place: which is the nearest approximation to uniformity of movement. It does not always revolve by itself; nor is it always made to revolve by the Divine Steersman ([Greek: kubernê/tês], p. 272 E), but alternately the one and the other. This Divine Steersman presides over its rotation for a certain time, and along with him many subordinate Deities or Dæmons; until an epoch fixed by some unassigned destiny has been reached (p. 272 E). Then the Steersman withdraws from the process to his own watch-tower ([Greek: ei)s tê\n au)tou= periôpê\n]), and the other Deities along with him. The Kosmos, being left to itself, ceases to revolve in the same direction, and begins its counter rotation; revolving by itself backwards, or in the contrary direction. By such violent revulsion many of the living inhabitants of the Kosmos are destroyed. The past phenomena are successively reproduced, but in an inverse direction--the old men go back to maturity, boyhood, infancy, death: the dead are born again, and pass through their lives backwards from age to infancy. Yet the counter-rotation brings about not simply an inverted reproduction of past phenomena, but new phenomena also: for we are told that the Kosmos, when left to itself, did tolerably well as long as it remembered the Steersman's direction, but after a certain interval became forgetful and went wrong, generating mischief and evil: so that the Steersman was at last forced to put his hand again to the work, and to impart to it a fresh rotation in his own direction (p. 273 B-D). The Kosmos never goes satisfactorily, except when the hand of the Steersman is upon it. But we are informed that there are varieties of this divine administration: one named the period of Kronus or Saturn; another that of Zeus, &c. The present is the period of Zeus (p. 272 B). The period of Kronus was one of spontaneous and universal abundance, under the immediate superintendence of the Deity. This Divine Ruler was infinitely superior to the subjects whom he ruled, and left nothing to be desired. But now, in the present period of Zeus, men are under human rule, and not divine: there is no such marked superiority of the Ruler to his subjects. The human race has been on the point of becoming extinct; and has only been saved by beneficent presents from various Gods--fire from Prometheus, handicraft from Hephæstus and Athênê (pp. 272 C, 274 C).

All this prodigious bulk of mythical invention ([Greek: thaumasto\s o)/gkos], p. 277 B) seems to be introduced here for the purpose of illustrating the comparative ratio between the Ruler and his subjects; and the material difference in this respect between King and Shepherd--between the government of mankind by kings, and that of flocks and herds by the herdsman. In attempting to define the True and Genuine Ruler (he lays it down), we can expect nothing better than a man among other men; but distinguished above his fellows, so far as wisdom, dialectic, and artistic accomplishment, can confer superiority.

There is much in this copious mythe which I cannot clearly understand or put together: nor do I derive much profit from the long exposition of it given by Stallbaum (Proleg. ad Polit. pp. 100-128). We cannot fairly demand either harmonious consistency or profound meaning in the different features of an ingenious fiction. The hypothesis of a counter-rotation of the Kosmos (spinning like a top, [Greek: e)pi\ smikrota/tou bai=non podo\s i)e/nai], p. 270 A), with an inverted reproduction of past phenomena, appears to me one of the most singular fancies in the Greek mythology. I cannot tell how far it may have been suggested by any such statement as that of the Egyptian priests (Herodot. ii. 142). I can only repeat the observation made by Phædrus to the Platonic Sokrates, in the dialogue Phædrus (p. 275 A): "You, Sokrates, construct easily enough Egyptian tales, or any other tales that you please".]

[Side-note: Distinction of causes Principal and Causes Auxiliary. The King is the only Principal Cause, but his auxiliaries pretend to be principal also.]

The human King, whom we shall now attempt to define, tends the human flock; but there are other persons also who assist in doing so, and without whose concurrent agency he could not attain his purpose. We may illustrate this by comparing with him the weaver of woollen garments: who requires many subsidiary and preparatory processes, performed by agents different from himself (such as the carder of wool, the spinner, and the manufacturer of the instruments for working the loom) to enable him to finish his work. In all matters, important as well as vulgar, two separate processes or arts, or contributory persons, are to be distinguished: Causes and Co-Causes, i.e., Principal Causes, and Concurrent, Auxiliary, Co-efficient, Subordinate, Causes.[19] The King, like the Weaver, is distinguishable, from other agents helping towards the same end, as a Principal Cause from Auxiliary Causes.[20] The Causes auxiliary to the King, in so far as they are inanimate, may be distributed roughly under seven heads (bipartition being here impracticable)--Implements, Vessels, Vehicles, Protections surrounding the Body, Recreative Objects, Raw Material of every variety, Nutritive Substances, &c.[21] Other auxiliary Causes are, the domestic cattle, bought slaves, and all descriptions of serving persons; being often freemen who undertake, for hire, servile occupations and low trades. There are moreover ministerial officers of a higher grade: heralds, scribes, interpreters, prophets, priests, Sophists, rhetors; and a great diversity of other functionaries, military, judicial, forensic, dramatic, &c., who manage different departments of public affairs, often changing from one post to another.[22] But these higher ministerial functionaries differ from the lower in this--That they pretend to be themselves the directors and managers of the government, not recognising the genuine King: whereas the truth is, that they are only ministerial and subordinate to him:--they are Concurrent Causes, while he is the only real or principal Cause.[23]

[Footnote 19: Plato, Politik. p. 281 D-E.]

[Footnote 20: Plato, Politik. p. 287 D.]

[Footnote 21: Plato, Politik. pp. 288-289.]

[Footnote 22: Plato, Politik. pp. 290-291 B. Plato describes these men by comparing them to lions, centaurs, satyrs, wild beasts, feeble and crafty. This is not very intelligible, but I presume that it alludes to the variety of functions, and the frequent alternation of functions. I cannot think that such an obscure jest deserves Stallbaum's compliment:--"Ceterum lepidissima hæc est istorum hominum irrisio, qui cum leonibus, Centauris, Satyris, aliisque monstris comparantur". Plato repeats it p. 303 C.]

[Footnote 23: Plato, Politik. p. 291 C.]

[Side-note: Plato does not admit the received classification of government. It does not touch the point upon which all true distinction ought to be founded--Scientific or Unscientific.]

Our main object now (says the Eleate) is to distinguish this Real Cause from the subordinate Causes which are mistaken for its partners and equals:--the genuine and intelligent Governor, from those who pretend falsely to be governors, and are supposed often to be such.[24] We cannot admit the lines of distinction, which are commonly drawn between different governments, as truly logical: at least they are only subordinate to ours. Most men distinguish the government of one, or a few, or the many: government of the poor or of the rich: government according to law, or without law:--by consent, or by force. The different names current, monarchy or despotism, aristocracy, or oligarchy, &c., correspond to these definitions. But we hold that these definitions do not touch the true characteristic: which is to be found in Science, Knowledge, Intelligence, Art or scientific procedure, &c., and in nothing else. The true government of mankind is, the scientific or artistic: whether it be carried on by one, or a few, or many--whether by poor or rich, by force or consent--whether according to law, or without law.[25] This is the right and essential characteristic of genuine government:--it is government conducted according to science or art. All governments not conforming to this type are only spurious counterfeits and approaches to it, more or less defective or objectionable.[26]

[Footnote 24: Plato, Politik. p. 292 D.]

[Footnote 25: Plato, Politik. pp. 292 C, 293 B.]

[Footnote 26: Plato, Politik. p. 293 E. [Greek: tau/tên to/te kai\ kata\ tou\s toiou/tous o(/rous ê(mi=n mo/nên o)rthê\n politei/an ei)=nai r(ête/on, o(/sas de\ a)/llas le/gomen, ou) gnêsi/as ou)d' o)/ntôs ou)/sas lekte/on.]]

[Side-note: Unscientific governments are counterfeits. Government by any numerous body must be counterfeit. Government by the one scientific man is the true government.]

Looking to the characteristic here suggested, the Eleate pronounces that all numerous and popular governments must be counterfeits. There can be no genuine government except by One man, or by a very small number at most. True science or art is not attainable by many persons, whether rich or poor: scarcely even by a few, and probably by One alone; since the science or art of governing men is more difficult than any other science or art.[27] But the government of this One is the only true and right government, whether he proclaims laws or governs without law, whether he employs severity or mildness--provided only he adheres to his art, and achieves its purpose, the good and improvement of the governed.[28] He is like the true physician, who cuts and burns patients, when his art commands, for the purpose of curing them. He will not be disposed to fetter himself by fixed general laws: for the variety of situations and the fluctuation of circumstances, is so perpetual, that no law can possibly fit all cases. He will recognise no other law but his art.[29] If he lays down any general formula or law, it will only be from necessity, because he cannot be always at hand to watch and direct each individual case: but he will not hesitate to depart from his own formula whenever Art enjoins it.[30] That alone is base, evil, unjust, which he with his political Science or Art declares to be so. If in any particular case he departs from his own declaration, and orders such a thing to be done--the public have no right to complain that he does injustice. No patient can complain of his physician, if the latter, acting upon the counsels of his art, disregards a therapeutic formula.[31] All the acts of the true Governor are right, whether according or contrary to law, so long as he conducts himself with Art and Intelligence--aiming exclusively to preserve the people, and to render them better instead of worse.[32]

[Footnote 27: Plato, Politik. pp. 292 D-E, 297 B, 300 E.]

[Footnote 28: Plato, Politik. p. 293 B-E.]

[Footnote 29: Plato, Politik. p. 297 A. [Greek: ou) gra/mmata tithei\s a)lla\ tê\n te/chnên no/mon parecho/menos.]]

[Footnote 30: Plato, Politik. pp. 300 C, 295 B-C.]

[Footnote 31: Plato, Politik. p. 296 C-D.]

[Footnote 32: Plato, Politik. p. 297 A.]

[Side-note: Fixed laws, limiting the scientific Governor, are mischievous, as they would be for the physician and the steersman. Absurdity of determining medical practice by laws, and presuming every one to know it.]

How mischievous would it be (continues the Eleate) if we prescribed by fixed laws how the physician or the steersman should practise their respective arts: if we held them bound to peremptory rules, punishing them whenever they departed from those rules, and making them accountable before the Dikastery, when any one accused them of doing so: if we consecrated these rules and dogmas, forbidding all criticism or censure upon them, and putting to death the free enquirer as a dreaming, prosy, Sophist, corrupting the youth and inciting lawless discontent![33] How absurd, if we pretended that every citizen did know, or might or ought to know, these two arts; because the matters concerning them were enrolled in the laws, and because no one ought to be wiser than the laws?[34] Who would think of imposing any such fetters on other arts, such as those of the general, the painter, the husbandman, the carpenter, the prophet, the cattle-dealer? To impose them would be to render life, hard as it is even now, altogether intolerable. Yet these are the trammels under which in actual cities the political Art is exercised.[35]

[Footnote 33: Plato, Politik. pp. 298-299. 299 B: [Greek: Kai\ toi/nun e)/ti deê/sei the/sthai no/mon e)pi\ pa=si tou/tois, a)/n tis kubernêtikê\n kai\ to\ nautiko\n ê)\ to\ u(gieino\n kai\ i)atrikê=s a)lêthei/an . . . zêtô=n phai/nêtai para\ ta\ gra/mmata kai\ sophizo/menos o(tiou=n peri\ ta\ toiau=ta, prô=ton me\n mê/te i)atriko\n au)to\n mê/te kubernêtiko\n o)noma/zein, a)lla\ meteôro/logon a)dole/schên tina\ sophistê\n ei)=th' ô(s diaphthei/ronta a)/llous neôte/rous kai\ a)napei/thonta e)piti/thesthai kubernêtikê=|], &c.]

[Footnote 34: Plato, Polit. p. 299 C. [Greek: a)\n de\ para\ tou\s no/mous kai\ ta\ gegramme/na do/xê| pei/thein ei)/te ne/ous ei)/te presbu/tas, kola/zein toi=s e)scha/tois. Ou)de\n ga\r dei=n tô=n no/môn, ei)=nai sophô/teron; ou)de/na ga\r a)gnoei=n to/ te i)atriko\n kai\ to\ u(gieino\n ou)de\ to\ kubernêtiko\n kai\ nautiko/n; e)xei=nai ga\r tô=| boulome/nô| mantha/nein gegramme/na kai\ pa/tria e)/thê kei/mena.]]

[Footnote 35: Plato, Polit. p. 299 D-E. [Greek: ô(/ste o( bi/os, ô(n kai\ nu=n chalepo/s, ei)s to\n chro/non e)kei=non a)bi/ôtos gi/gnoit' a)\n to\ para/pan.]]

[Side-note: Government by fixed laws is better than lawless government by unscientific men, but worse than lawless government by scientific men. It is a second-best.]

Such are the mischiefs inseparable, in greater or less degree, from fixed and peremptory laws. Yet grave as these mischiefs are, there are others yet graver, which such laws tend to obviate. If the magistrate appointed to guard and enforce the laws, ventures to break or contravene them, simulating, but not really possessing, the Art or Science of the genuine Ruler--he will make matters far worse. The laws at any rate are such as the citizens have been accustomed to, and such as give a certain measure of satisfaction. But the arbitrary rule of this violent and unscientific Governor is a tyranny:[36] which is greatly worse than the laws. Fixed laws are thus a second-best:[37] assuming that you cannot obtain a true scientific, artistic, Governor. If such a man could be obtained, men would be delighted to live under him. But they despair of ever seeing such a character, and they therefore cling to fixed laws, in spite of the numerous concomitant mischiefs.[38] These mischiefs are indeed so serious, that when we look at actual cities, we are astonished how they get on under such a system; and we cannot but feel how firm and deeply rooted a city naturally is.[39]

[Footnote 36: Plato, Politik. p. 300 A-B, 301 B-C.]

[Footnote 37: Plato, Politik. p. 300 C. [Greek: deu/teros plou=s].]

[Footnote 38: Plato, Politik. p. 301 D.]

[Footnote 39: Plato, Polit. p. 302 A. [Greek: ê)\ e)kei=no ê(mi=n thaumaste/on ma=llon, ô(s i)schuro/n ti po/lis e)sti\ phu/sei?]]

[Side-note: Comparison of unscientific governments. The one despot is the worse. Democracy is the least bad, because it is least of a government.]

We see therefore (the Eleate goes on) that there is no true polity--nothing which deserves the name of a genuine political society--except the government of one chief, scientific or artistic. With him laws are superfluous and even inconvenient. All other polities are counterfeits: factions and cabals, rather than governments:[40] delusions carried on by tricksters and conjurers. But among these other polities or sham polities, there is a material difference as to greater or less badness: and the difference turns upon the presence or absence of good laws. Thus, the single-headed government, called monarchy (assuming the Prince not to be a man of science or art) is the best of all the sham-polities, if the Prince rules along with and in observance of known good laws: but it is the worst of them all, if he rules without such laws, as a despot or tyrant. Oligarchy, or the government of a few--if under good laws, is less good than that of the Prince under the same circumstances--if without such laws, is less bad than that of the despot. Lastly, the government of the many is less good under the one supposition--and less bad under the other. It is less effective, either for good or for evil. It is in fact less of a government: the administrative force being lost by dissipation among many hands for short intervals; and more free play being thus left to individuals. Accordingly, assuming the absence of laws, democracy is the least bad or most tolerable of the six varieties of sham-polity. Assuming the presence of laws, it is the worst of them.[41]

[Footnote 40: Plato, Polit. pp. 302-303 B-C. [Greek: tou\s koinônou\s tou/tôn tô=n politeiô=n pasô=n, plê\n tê=s e)pistê/monos, a)phairete/on ô(s ou)k o)/ntas politikou\s a)lla\ stasiastikou/s, kai\ ei)dô/lôn megi/stôn prosta/tas o)/ntas kai\ au)tou\s ei)=nai toiou/tous, megi/stous de\ o)/ntas mimêta\s kai\ go/êtas megi/stous gi/gnesthai tô=n sophistô=n sophista/s.]]

[Footnote 41: Plato, Polit. p. 302 B. [Greek: ti/s dê\ tô=n ou)k o)rthô=n politeiô=n tou/tôn ê(/kista chalepê\ suzê=n, pasô=n chalepô=n ou)sô=n, kai\ ti/s baruta/tê?] Also p. 303 A-B.]

[Side-note: The true governor distinguished from the General, the Rhetor, &c. They are all properly his subordinates and auxiliaries.]

We have thus severed the genuine scientific Governor from the unworthy counterfeits by whom his agency is mimicked in actual society. But we have still to sever him from other worthier functionaries, analogous and cognate, with whom he co-operates; and to show by what characteristic he is distinguished from persons such as the General, the Judge, the Rhetor or Persuader to good and just objects. The distinction is, that all these functions, however honourable functions, are still nevertheless essentially subordinate and ministerial, assuming a sovereign guidance from some other quarter to direct them. Thus the General may, by his strategic art, carry on war effectively; but he must be directed when, and against whom, war is to be carried on. The Judge may decide quarrels without fear, antipathy, or favour: but the general rules for deciding them must be prescribed to him by a higher authority. So too the Rhetor may apply his art well, to persuade people, or to work upon their emotions, without teaching them: but he must be told by some one else, when and on what occasions persuasion is suitable, and when force must be employed instead of it.[42] Each of these functionaries must learn, what his own art will not teach him, the proper seasons, persons, and limitations, among and under which his art is to be applied. To furnish such guidance is the characteristic privilege and duty of the scientific chief, for which he alone is competent. He does not act himself, but he originates, directs, and controls, all the real agents and agencies. Without him, none of them are available or beneficial towards their special ends. He alone can judge of their comparative value, and of the proper reasons for invoking or restraining their interference.[43]

[Footnote 42: Plato, Polit. pp. 304-305.]

[Footnote 43: Plato, Polit. p. 305 D. [Greek: tê\n ga\r o)/ntôs ou)=san basilikê\n ou)k au)tê\n dei= pra/ttein, a)ll' a)/rchein tô=n duname/nôn pra/ttein, gignô/skousan tê\n a)rchê/n te kai\ o(rmê\n tô=n megi/stôn e)n tai=s po/lesin e)gkairi/as te pe/ri kai\ a)kairi/as, ta\s d' a)/llas ta\ prostachthe/nta dra=|n.]]

[Side-note: What the scientific Governor will do. He will aim at the formation of virtuous citizens. He will weave together the energetic virtues with the gentle virtues. Natural dissidence between them.]

The great scientific Governor being thus defined, and logically distinguished from all others liable to be confounded with him, Plato concludes by a brief statement what his principal functions are. He will aim at ensuring among his citizens the most virtuous characters and the best ethical combinations. Like the weaver (to whom he has been already assimilated) he will put together the great political web or tissue of improved citizenship, intertwining the strong and energetic virtues (the warp) with the yielding and gentler virtues (the woof).[44] Both these dispositions are parts or branches of virtue; but there is a natural variance or repulsion between them.[45] Each of them is good, in proper measure and season: each of them is bad, out of measure and season. The combination of both, in due proportion, is indispensable to form the virtuous citizen: and that combination it is the business of the scientific Governor to form and uphold. It is with a view to this end that he must set at work all the agents of teaching and education, and must even interfere to arrange the intermarriages of the citizens; not allowing the strong and courageous families to form alliance with each other, lest the breed should in time become too violent--nor the gentle and quiet families to do the like, lest the offspring should degenerate into stupidity.[46]

[Footnote 44: Plato, Polit. pp. 306-307. [Greek: tê\n basilikê\n sumplokê/n].]

[Footnote 45: Plato, Polit. pp. 306 A-B, 307 C, 308 B.]

[Footnote 46: Plato, Polit. pp. 308-309-310.]

[Side-note: If a man sins by excess of the energetic element, he is to be killed or banished: if of the gentle, he is to be made a slave. The Governor must keep up in the minds of the citizens an unanimous standard of ethical orthodoxy.]

All persons, who, unable to take on this conjunction, sin by an excess of the strong element, manifesting injustice or irreligion--must be banished or put to death:[47] all who sin by excess of the feebler element, exhibiting stupidity and meanness, must be degraded into slavery. Above all things, the scientific Governor must himself dictate, and must implant and maintain, in the minds of all his citizens, an authoritative standard of orthodox sentiment respecting what is just, honourable, good--and the contrary.[48] If this be ensured, and if the virtues naturally discordant be attempered with proper care, he will make sure of a friendly and harmonious community, enjoying as much happiness as human affairs admit.[49]

[Footnote 47: Plato, Polit. p. 309 A.]

[Footnote 48: Plato, Polit. pp. 309 C, 310 E.]

[Footnote 49: Plato, Polit. p. 311 B-C.]

* * * * *

[Side-note: Remarks--Sokratic Ideal--Title to govern mankind derived exclusively from scientific superiority in an individual person.]

I have thus given a brief abridgment of the main purpose of the Politikus, and of the definition which Plato gives of the True Governor and his function. I proceed to make a few remarks upon it.

Plato's theory of government is founded upon the supposition of perfect knowledge--scientific or artistic intelligence--in the person of the Governor: a partial approach, through teaching and acquired knowledge, to that immense superiority of the Governor over the Governed, which existed in the Saturnian period. It is this, and this alone, which constitutes, in his estimation, the title to govern mankind. The Governor does not himself act: he directs the agency of others: and the directions are dictated by his knowledge. I have already observed that Sokrates had himself enunciated the doctrine--Superior scientific competence (the special privilege of a professor or an artist) is the only legitimate title to govern.

[Side-note: Different ways in which this ideal is worked out by Plato and Xenophon. The man of speculation and the man of action.]

From Sokrates the idea passed both to Plato and to Xenophon: and the contrast between the two is shown forcibly by the different way in which they deal with it. Xenophon has worked it out on a large scale, in the Cyropædia--on a small scale, in the OEconomicus. Cyrus in the former, Ischomachus in the latter, knows better than any one else what is to be done, and gives orders accordingly. But both the one and the other are also foremost in action, setting example as well as giving orders to others. Now Plato, while developing the same idea, draws a marked line of distinction between Science and Practice:--between direction and execution.[50] His scientific Governor does not act at all, but he gives orders to all the different men of action, and he is the only person who knows on what occasions and within what limits each agent should put forth his own special aptitude. Herein we discern one of the distinctions between these two viri Socratici: Xenophon, the soldier and man of action--Plato, the speculative philosopher. Xenophon conceives the conditions of the True Governor in a larger way than Plato, for he includes among them the forward and energetic qualities requisite for acting on the feelings of the subject Many, and for disposing them to follow orders with cheerfulness and zeal:[51] whereas Plato makes abstraction of this part of the conditions, and postulates obedience on the part of the many as an item in his fundamental hypothesis. Indeed he perpetually presents us with the comparison of the physician, who cuts and burns for the purpose of ultimate cure. Plato either neglects, or assumes as a matter of course, the sentiments of the persons commanded, or the conditions of willing obedience; while Xenophon dwells upon the maintenance of such sentiments as one of the capital difficulties in the problem of government. And we perceive a marked contrast between the unskilful proceedings of Plato, when he visited Dionysius II. at Syracuse, illustrating his (Plato's) inaptitude for dealing with a real situation--and the judicious management of Xenophon, when acting as one of the leaders of the Cyreian army under circumstances alike unexpected and perilous.

[Footnote 50: Plato, Polit. pp. 259 C-D, 305 D.]

[Footnote 51: See the preface to Xenophon's Cyropædia; also Cyropæd. i. 6, 20; and his Oecon. c. 21, and c. 13, 4, where we see the difference between the Xenophontic idea, and the Platonic idea, of [Greek: o( a)rchiko\s a)nthrô/pôn, oi( thei=oi kai\ a)gathoi\ kai\ e)pistê/mones a)/rchontes].]

[Side-note: The theory in the Politikus is the contradiction to that theory which is assigned to Protagoras in the Protagoras.]

Plato here sets forth the business of governing as a special art, analogous to the special art of the weaver, the steersman, the physician. Now in each special art, the requisite knowledge and competence is possessed only by the one or few artists who practise them. The knowledge possessed by such one or few, suffices for all the remaining community; who benefit by it, but are altogether ignorant on the matter, and follow orders blindfold. As this one Artist is the only competent person for the task, so he is assumed quâ Artist, to be infallible in the performance of the task--never to go wrong, nor to abuse his power, nor to aim at any collateral end.[52] Such is Plato's theory of government in the Politikus. But if we turn to the Protagoras, we shall find this very theory of government explicitly denied, and a counter-theory affirmed, in the discourse put into the mouth of Protagoras. That Sophist is made to distinguish the political or social art, upon which the possibility of constituting or keeping up human society depends, from all other arts (manual, useful, linguistic), by this express characteristic: All other arts were distributed among mankind in such manner, that knowledge and skill were confined to an exclusive few, whose knowledge, each in his own special department, sufficed for the service of all the rest, not favoured with the like knowledge--but the political or social art was distributed (by order of Zeus to Hermes) on a principle quite opposite. It was imparted to every member of society without exception. If it had been granted only to a few, and not to all, society could not have held together. Justice and the sense of shame (Temperance or Moderation), which are the bonds of the city and the fruits of the political art, must be instilled into every man. Whoever cannot take on and appropriate them (Zeus proclaims it as his law), must be slain as a nuisance or distemper of the city.[53]

[Footnote 52: Compare Plato, Republic, i. pp. 340-341.]

[Footnote 53: Plato, Protag. pp. 322, 325 A.]

[Side-note: Points of the Protagorean theory--rests upon common sentiment.]

Such we have seen to be the theory enunciated by the Platonic Protagoras (in the dialogue so-called) respecting the political or social art. It pervades all the members of society, as a common and universal attribute, though each man has his own specialty besides. It was thus distributed at the outset by Zeus. It stands embodied in the laws and in the unwritten customs, so that one man may know it as well as another. Every man makes open profession of knowing and possessing it:--which he cannot do with any special art. Fathers enforce it on their children by rewards and punishments, schoolmasters and musicians impart it by extracts from the poets: the old teach it to the young: nay every man, far from desiring to monopolise it for himself, is forward in teaching it to others: for it is the interest of every one that his neighbour should learn it. Since every one thus teaches it, there are no professed or special teachers: yet there are still some few who can teach it a little better than others--and among those few I (says Protagoras) am one.[54]

[Footnote 54: Plato, Protag. pp. 327-328.]

[Side-note: Counter-Theory in the Politikus. The exigencies of the Eleate in the Politikus go much farther than those of Protagoras.]

Whoever compares the doctrine of the Politikus[55] with the portion of the Protagoras[56] to which I have just referred, will see that they stand to each other as theory and counter-theory. The theory in the Politikus sets aside (intentionally or not) that in the Protagoras. The Platonic Protagoras, spokesman of King Nomos, represents common sense, sentiment, sympathies and antipathies, written laws, and traditional customs known to all as well as reverenced by the majority: the Platonic Politikus repudiates all these, as preposterous fetters to the single Governor who monopolises all political science and art. Let us add too, that the Platonic Protagoras (whom many commentators teach us to regard as a person of exorbitant arrogance and pretensions) is a very modest man compared to the Eleate in the Platonic Politikus. For the former accepts all the written laws and respected customs around him,--admits that most others know them, in the main, as well as he,--and only professes to have acquired a certain amount of superior skill in impressing them upon others: whereas the latter sets them all aside, claims for himself an uncontradicted monopoly of social science and art, and postulates an extent of blind submission from society such as has never yet been yielded in history.

[Footnote 55: Plato, Politik. p. 301 E.

The portion of this dialogue, from p. 296 to p. 302, enunciates the doctrine of which I have given a brief abstract in the text.]

[Footnote 56: Plato, Protag. pp. 321-328.]

[Side-note: The Eleate complains that under the Protagorean theory no adverse criticism is allowed. The dissenter is either condemned to silence or punished.]

The Eleate here complains of it as a hardship, that amidst a community actually established and existing, directed by written laws, traditional customs and common sentiment (the Protagorean model),--he, the political artist, is interdicted from adverse criticism and outspoken censure of the legal and consecrated doctrines. If he talks as one wiser than the laws, or impugns them as he thinks that they deserve, or theorises in his own way respecting the doctrines which they sanction--he is either laughed to scorn as a visionary, prosing, Sophist--or hated, and perhaps punished, as a corrupter of youth; as a person who brings the institutions of society into contempt, and encourages violators of the law.[57]

[Footnote 57: Plato, Politik. p. 299 B. [Greek: a)\n tis . . . zêtô=n phai/nêtai para\ ta\ gra/mmata kai\ sophizo/menos o(tiou=n peri\ ta\ toiau=ta.]

In the seventh book of Republic (p. 520 B), Plato describes the position of the philosopher in an established society, springing up by his own internal force, against the opposition of all the social influences--[Greek: au)to/matoi ga\r e)mphu/ontai a)kou/sês tê=s e)n e(ka/stê| (po/lei) politei/as], &c.]

[Side-note: Intolerance at Athens, not so great as elsewhere. Plato complains of the assumption of infallibility in existing societies, but exacts it severely in that which he himself constructs.]

The reproach implied in these phrases of Plato is doubtless intended as an allusion to the condemnation of Sokrates. It is a reproach well-founded against that proceeding of the government of Athens:--and would have been still better founded against other contemporary governments. That the Athenians were intolerant, is not to be denied: but they were less intolerant than any of their contemporaries. Nowhere else except at Athens could Sokrates have gone on until seventy years of age talking freely in the market-place against the received political and religious orthodoxy. There was more free speech ([Greek: par)r(êsi/a])[58] at Athens than in any part of the contemporary world. Plato, Xenophon, and the other companions of Sokrates, proclaimed by lectures and writings that they thought themselves wiser than the laws of Athens: yet though the Gorgias was intended as well as adapted to bring into hatred and contempt both those laws and the persons who administered them, the Athenian Rhetors never indicted Plato for libel. Upon this point, we can only speak comparatively: for perfect liberty of proclaiming opinions neither does now exist, nor ever has existed, any where. Most men have no genuine respect for the right of another to form and express an opinion dissentient from theirs: if they happen to hate the opinion, they account it a virtue to employ as much ill-usage or menace as will frighten the holder thereof into silence. Plato here points out in emphatic language,[59] the deplorable consequences of assuming infallibility and perfection for the legal and customary orthodoxy of the country, and prohibiting free censure by dissentient individuals. But this is on the supposition that the laws and customs are founded only on common sense and traditional reverence:--and that the scientific Governor is among the dissenters. Plato's judgment is radically different when he supposes the case reversed:--when King Nomos is superseded by the scientific Professor of whom Plato dreams, or by a lawgiver who represents him. We shall observe this when we come to the Treatise de Legibus, in which Plato constitutes an orthodoxy of his own, prohibiting free dissent by restrictions and penalties stricter than any which were known to antiquity. He cannot recognise an infallible common sense: but he has no scruple in postulating an infallible scientific dictator, and in enthroning himself as such. Though well aware that reasoned truth presents itself to different philosophers in different versions, he does not hesitate to condemn those philosophers who differ from him, to silence or to something worse.

[Footnote 58: See Euripides, Ion, 671.

[Greek: e)k tô=n A)thênô=n m' ê( tekou=s' ei)/ê gunê/, ô(/s moi ge/noito mêtro/then par)r(êsi/a.]

Also Euripid. Hippolyt. 424, and Plato, Gorgias, p. 461 E, where Sokrates says to Polus--[Greek: deina\ me/nt' a)\n pa/thois, ei) A)thê/naze a)phiko/menos, ou)= tê=s E(lla/dos, plei/stê e)sti\n e)xousi/a tou= le/gein, e)/peita su\ e)ntau=tha tou/tou mo/nos a)tuchê/sais], &c.]

[Footnote 59: Plato, Polit. p. 299 E.]

[Side-note: Theory of the Politikus--distinguished three gradations of polity. Gigantic individual force the worst.]

It will appear then that the Platonic Politikus distinguishes three varieties and gradations of social constitution.

1. Science or Art. Systematic Construction from the beginning, based upon Theory.--That which is directed by the constant supervision of a scientific or artistic Ruler. This is the only true or legitimate polity. Represented by Plato in Republic. Illustrated by the systematic scheme of weights, measures, apportionment of years, months, and days, in calendar--put together on scientific principles by the French Convention in 1793--as contrasted with the various local, incoherent, growths, which had obtained recognition through custom or arbitrary preference of unscientific superiors.

2. Common Sense. Unsystematic Aggregate of Customs, accepted in an Actual Society.--That which is directed by written laws and fixed traditional customs, known to every one, approved by the common sense of the community, and communicated as well as upheld by the spontaneous teaching of the majority. King Nomos.

This stands for the second best scheme: the least objectionable form of degeneracy--yet still a degeneracy. It is the scheme set forth by the Platonic Protagoras, in the dialogue so called. Represented with improvements by Plato in Treatise De Legibus.

3. Gigantic Individual Force.--That in which some violent individual--not being really scientific or artistic, but perhaps falsely pretending to be so--violates and tramples under foot the established laws and customs, under the stimulus of his own exorbitant ambition and unmeasured desires.

This is put forward as the worst scheme of all: as the greatest depravation of society, and the greatest forfeiture of public as well as private happiness. We have here the proposition which Pôlus and Kalliklês are introduced as defending in the Gorgias, and Thrasymachus in the Republic. In both dialogues, Sokrates undertakes to expose it. The great benefit conferred by King Nomos, is, that he protects society against the maximum of evil.

[Side-note: Comparison of the Politikus with the Republic. Points of analogy and difference.]

Another interesting comparison may be made: that between the Politikus and the Republic. We must remember that the Politikus is announced by Plato as having two purposes. 1. To give a lesson in the method of definition and division. 2. To define the characteristic of the person bearing the name of Politikus, distinguishing him from all others, analogous or disparate.--The method is here more prominent than the doctrine.

But in the Republic, no lesson of method is attempted; the doctrine stands alone and independent of it. We shall find however that the doctrine is essentially the same. That which the Politikus lays down in brief outline, is in the Republic amplified and enlarged; presented with many variations and under different points of view, yet, still at the bottom, the same doctrine, both as to affirmation and negation. The Republic affirms (as the Politikus does) the exclusive legitimacy of science, art, intelligence, &c., as the initiatory and omnipotent authority over all the constituent members of society: and farther, that such intelligence can have no place except in one or a few privileged persons. The Republic (like the Politikus) presents to us the march of society with its Principal Cause--its concurrent or Auxiliary Causes--and its inferior governable mass or matter, the human flock, indispensable and co-essential as a part of the whole scheme. In the Republic, the Cause is represented by the small council of philosophical Elders: the concurrent causes, by the Guardians or trained soldiers: the inferior matter, by the remaining society, which is distributed among various trades, providing for the subsistence and wants of all. The explanation of Justice (which is the ostensible purpose of the Republic) is made to consist in the fact--That each one of these several parts does its own special work--nothing more--nothing less. Throughout all the Republic, a constant parallelism is carried on (often indeed overstrained) between the community and the individual man. In the one as well as in the other, Plato recognises the three constituent elements, all essential as co-operators, but each with its own special function: in the individual, he recognises three souls (encephalic, thoracic, and abdominal) as corresponding to Elders, Guardians, and Producers, in the community. Here are the same features as those given in outline in the Politikus: but the two higher features of the three appear greatly expanded in the Republic: the training and conditions proper for the philosophic Artist or Governor, and for his auxiliaries the Guardians, being described and vindicated at great length. Moreover, in the Republic, Plato not only repeats the doctrine[60] that the right of command belongs to every art in its own province and over its own subject-matter (which is the cardinal point in the Politikus)--but he farther proclaims that each individual neither can exercise, nor ought to exercise, more than one art. He allows no double men or triple men[61]--"Quam quisque novit artem, in eâ se exerceat". He would not have respected the Xenophontic Cyrus or Ischomachus. He carries the principle of specialization to its extreme point. His Republic is an aggregate of special artists and professional aptitudes: among whom the Governor is only one, though the first and rarest. He sets aside the common basis of social endowments essential to every man: upon which each man's specialty is superinduced in the theory of the Platonic Protagoras. The only common quality which Plato admits is,--That each man, and each of the three souls composing each man, shall do his own business and his own business only: this is his definition of Justice, in the Republic.[62]

[Footnote 60: Plato, Republ. i. p. 342 C. [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n a)/rchousi ge ai( te/chnai kai\ kratou=sin e)kei/nou ou)= per ei)si\ te/chnai.]]

[Footnote 61: Plato, Republ. ii. pp. 370 B, 374 B--395-397 E. [Greek: ou)k e)/sti diplou=s a)nê\r par' ê(mi=n ou)de\ pollaplou=s, e)peidê\ e(/kastos e(\n pra/ttei] (p. 397 E).]

[Footnote 62: Plato, Republ. iv. p. 433.]

[Side-note: Comparison of the Politikus with the Kratylus. Dictatorial, constructive, science or art, common to both: applied in the former to social administration--in the latter to the formation and modification of names.]

Lastly, I will illustrate the Politikus by comparison with the Kratylus, which will be treated in the next chapter. The conception of dictatorial science or art, which I have stated as the principal point in the Politikus, appears again in the Kratylus applied to a different subject--naming, or the imposition of names. Right and legitimate name-giving is declared to be an affair of science or art, like right and legitimate polity: it can only be performed by the competent scientific or artistic name-giver, or by the lawgiver considered in that special capacity. The second title of the dialogue Kratylus is [Greek: Peri\ O)noma/tôn O)rtho/têtos]--On the Rectitude or legitimacy of names. What constitutes right and legitimate Name-giving? In like manner, we might provide a second title for the Politikus--[Greek: Peri\ Politei/as O)rtho/têtos]--On the rectitude or legitimacy of polity or sociality. What constitutes right or legitimate sociality?[63] Plato answers--It is the constant dictation and supervision of art or science--or of the scientific, artistic, dictator, who alone knows both the End and the means. This alone is right and true sociality--or sociality as it ought to be. So, if we read the Kratylus, we find Plato defining in the same way right Name-giving--or name-giving as it ought to be. It is when each name is given by an artistic name-constructor, who discerns the Form of the name naturally suitable in each particular case, and can embody it in appropriate letters and syllables.[64] A true or right name signifies by likeness to the thing signified.[65] The good lawgiver discerns this likeness: but all lawgivers are not good: the bad lawgiver fancies that he discerns it, but is often mistaken.[66] It would be the ideal perfection of language, if every name could be made to signify by likeness to the thing named. But this cannot be realised: sufficient likenesses cannot be found to furnish an adequate stock of names. In the absence of such best standard, we are driven to eke out language by appealing to a second-best, an inferior and vulgar principle approximating more or less, to rectitude--that is, custom and convention.[67]

[Footnote 63: The exact expression occurs in Politikus, pp. 293 E, 294 A. [Greek: nu=n de\ ê)/dê phanero\n o(/ti tou=to boulêso/metha, to\ peri\ tê=s tô=n a)/neu no/môn a)rcho/ntôn o)rtho/têtos dielthei=n ê(ma=s.]

The [Greek: o)rthê/, a)lêthinê/, gnêsi/a, politei/a] are phrases employed several times--pp. 292 A-C, 293 B-E, 296 E, 297 B-D. 300 D-E: [Greek: o( a)lêthino/s, o( e)/ntechnos]. 300 E: [Greek: tê\n a)lêthinê\n e)kei/nên, tê\n tou= e(no\s meta\ te/chnês a)/rchontos politei/an]. 302 A-E.

Plato sometimes speaks as if a bad [Greek: politei/a] were no [Greek: politei/a] at all--as if a bad [Greek: no/mos] were no [Greek: no/mos] at all. See above, vol. ii. ch. xiv. pp. 88, where I have touched on this point in reviewing the Minos. This is a frequent and perplexing confusion, but purely verbal. Compare Aristotel. Polit. iii. 2. p. 1276, a. 1, where he deals with the like confusion--[Greek: a)=r' ei) mê\ dikai/ôs poli/tês, ou) poli/tês?]]

[Footnote 64: Plato, Kratylus, p. 388 E. [Greek: Ou)/k a)/ra panto\s a)ndro\s o)/noma the/sthai e)/stin, a)lla/ tinos o)nomatourgou/; ou(=tos d' e)/stin, ô(s e)/oiken, o( nomothe/tês, o(\s dê\ tô=n dêmiourgô=n spaniô/tatos e)n a)nthrô/pois gi/gnetai.] Compare Politik. p. 292 D.]

[Footnote 65: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 430, 431 D, 430 C.]

[Footnote 66: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 431 E, 436 B.]

[Footnote 67: Plato, Kratyl. p. 435 B-C.

So in the Protagoras (p. 328 A) we find the Platonic Protagoras comparing the self-originated and self-sustaining traditional ethics, to the traditional language--[Greek: ti/s dida/skalo/s e)sti tou= E(llêni/zein?]]

We see thus that in the Kratylus also, as well as in the Politikus, the systematic dictation of the Man of Science or Art is pronounced to be the only basis of complete rectitude. Below this, and far short of it, yet still indispensable as a supplement in real life--is, the authority of unsystematic custom or convention; not emanating from any systematic constructive Artist, but actually established (often, no one knows how) among the community, and resting upon their common sentiment, memory, and tradition.

[Side-note: Courage and Temperance are assumed in the Politikus. No notice taken of the doubts and difficulties raised in Lachês and Charmidês.]

This is the true Platonic point of view, considering human affairs in every department, the highest as well as the lowest, as subjects of Art and Science: specialization of attributes and subdivision of function, so that the business of governing falls to the lot of one or a few highly qualified Governors: while the social edifice is assumed to have been constructed from the beginning by one of these Governors, with a view to consistent, systematic, predetermined ends--instead of that incoherent aggregate[68] which is consecrated under the empire of law and custom. Here in the Politikus, we read that the great purpose of the philosophical Governor is to train all the citizens into virtuous characters: by a proper combination of Courage and Temperance, two endowments naturally discordant, yet each alike essential in its proper season and measure. The interweaving of these two forms the true Regal Web of social life.[69]

[Footnote 68:The want of coherence, or of reference to any common and distinct End, among the bundle of established [Greek: No/mima] is noted by Aristotle, Polit. vii. 2, 1324, b. 5: [Greek: dio\ kai\ tô=n plei/stôn nomi/môn chu/dên, ô(s ei)pei=n keime/nôn para\ toi=s plei/stois, o(/môs, ei)/ pou/ ti pro\s e(\n oi( no/moi ble/pousi, tou= kratei=n stocha/zontai Krê/tê| pro\s tou\s pole/mous sunte/taktai schedo\n ê)\ te paidei/a kai\ to\ tô=n no/môn plê=thos.]

Custom and education surround all prohibitions with the like sanctity--both those most essential to the common security, and those which emanate from capricious or local antipathy--in the minds of docile citizens.

[Greek: I)=so/n toi kua/mous te phagei=n, kephala/s te tokê/ôn.]

Aristotle dissents from Plato on the point of always vesting the governing functions in the same hands. He considers such a provision dangerous and intolerable to the governed.

Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 1264, b. 6.]

[Footnote 69: Plato, Polit. p. 306 A. [Greek: basilikê\ sumplokê/], &c.

Schleiermacher in his Introduction to the Politikus (pp. 254-256) treats this [Greek: basilikê\ sumplokê\] as a poor and insignificant function, for the political Artist determined and installed by so elaborate a method and classification. But the dialogue was already so long that Plato could not well lengthen it by going into fuller details. Socher points out (Ueber Platon's Schrift. p. 274) discrepancies between the Politikus on one side, and Protagoras and Gorgias on the other--which I think are really discoverable, though I do not admit the inference which he draws from them.]

Such is the concluding declaration of the accomplished Eleatic expositor, to Sokrates and the other auditors. But this suggests to us another question, when we revert to some of the Platonic dialogues handled in the preceding pages. What are Virtue, Courage, Temperance? In the Menon, the Platonic Sokrates had proclaimed, that he did not himself know what virtue was: that he had never seen any one else who did know: that it was impossible to say how virtue could be communicated, until you knew what virtue was--and impossible to determine any one of the parts of virtue, until virtue had been determined as a whole. In the Charmidês, Sokrates had affirmed that he did not know what Temperance was; he then tested several explanations thereof, propounded by Charmides and Kritias: but ending only in universal puzzle and confessed ignorance. In the Lachês, he had done the same with Courage: not without various expressions of regret for his own ignorance, and of surprise at those who talked freely about generalities which they had never probed to the bottom. Perplexed by these doubts and difficulties--which perplexed yet more all his previous hearers, the modest beauty of Charmides and the mature dignity of Nikias and Laches--Sokrates now finds himself in presence of the Eleate, who talks about Virtue, Temperance, Courage, &c., as matters determinate and familiar. Here then would have been the opportunity for Sokrates to reproduce all his unsolved perplexities, and to get them cleared up by the divine Stranger who is travelling on a mission of philosophy. The third dialogue, to be called the Philosophus, which Plato promises as sequel to the Sophistês and Politikus, would have been well employed in such a work of elucidation.

[Side-note: Purpose of the difficulties in Plato's Dialogues of Search--To stimulate the intellect of the hearer. His exposition does not give solutions.]

This, I say, is what we might have expected, if Plato had corresponded to the picture drawn by admiring commentators: if he had merely tied knots in one dialogue, in order to untie them in another. But we find nothing of the kind, nor is such a picture of Plato correct. The dialogue Philosophus does not exist, and probably was never written. Respecting the embarrassments of the Menon, Lachês, Charmidês, Alkibiadês I., Protagoras, Euthyphron--Sokrates says not a word--[Greek: ou)de\ gru/]--to urge them upon the attention of the Eleate: who even alludes with displeasure to contentious disputants as unfair enemies. For the right understanding of these mysterious but familiar words--Virtue, Courage, Temperance--we are thrown back upon the common passive, unscientific, unreasoning, consciousness: or upon such measure and variety of it as each of us may have chanced to imbibe from the local atmosphere, unassisted by any special revelation from philosophy. At any rate, the Eleate furnishes no interpretative aid. He employs the words, as if the hearers understood them of course, without the slightest intimation that any difficulty attaches to them. Plato himself ignores all the difficulties, when he is putting positive exposition into the mouth of the Eleate. Puzzles and perplexities belong to the Dialogues of Search; in which they serve their purpose, if they provoke the intellect of the hearer to active meditation and effort, for the purpose of obtaining a solution.

XXXI. KRATYLUS

The dialogue entitled Kratylus presents numerous difficulties to the commentators: who differ greatly in their manner of explaining, First, What is its main or leading purpose? Next, How much of it is intended as serious reasoning, how much as mere caricature or parody, for the purpose of exposing and reducing to absurdity the doctrines of opponents? Lastly, who, if any, are the opponents thus intended to be ridiculed?

[Side-note: Persons and subjects of the dialogue Kratylus--Sokrates has no formed opinion, but is only a Searcher with the others.]

The subject proposed for discussion is, the rectitude or inherent propriety of names. How far is there any natural adaptation, or special fitness, of each name to the thing named? Two disputants are introduced who invoke Sokrates as umpire. Hermogenes asserts the negative of the question; contending that each name is destitute of natural significance, and acquires its meaning only from the mutual agreement and habitual usage of society.[1] Kratylus on the contrary maintains the doctrine that each name has a natural rectitude or fitness for its own significant function:--that there is an inherent bond of connection, a fundamental analogy or resemblance between each name and the thing signified. Sokrates carries on the first part of the dialogue with Hermogenes, the last part with Kratylus.[2] He declares more than once, that the subject is one on which he is ignorant, and has formed no conclusion: he professes only to prosecute the search for a good conclusion, conjointly with his two companions.[3]

[Footnote 1: In the arguments put into the mouth of Hermogenes, he is made to maintain two opinions which are not identical, but opposed. 1. That names are significant by habit and convention, and not by nature. 2. That each man may and can give any name which he pleases to any object (pp. 384-385).

The first of these two opinions is that which is really discussed here: impugned in the first half of the dialogue, conceded in the second. It is implied that names are to serve the purpose of mutual communication and information among persons living in society; which purpose they would not serve if each individual gave a different name to the same object. The second opinion is therefore not a consequence of the first, but an implied contradiction of the first.

He who says that the names Horse and Dog are significant by convention, will admit that at the outset they might have been inverted in point of signification; but he will not say that any individual may invert them at pleasure, now that they are established. The purposes of naming would no longer be answered, if this were done.]

[Footnote 2: The question between Hermogenes and Kratylus was much debated among the philosophers and literary men throughout antiquity (Aul. Gell. x. 4). Origen says (contra Celsum, i. c. 24)--[Greek: lo/gos bathu\s kai\ a)po/r)r(êtos o( peri\ phu/seôs o)noma/tôn, po/teron, ô(s oi)/etai A)ristote/lês, the/sei ei)=nai ta\ o)no/mata, ê)\, ô(s nomi/zousin oi( a)po\ tê=s Stoa=s, phu/sei.]

Aristotle assumes the question in favour of [Greek: the/sei], in his treatise De Interpretatione, without any reasoning, against the Platonic Kratylus; but his commentators, Ammonius and Boethius, note the controversy as one upon which eminent men in antiquity were much divided.

Plato connects his opinion, that names have a natural rectitude of signification, with his general doctrine of self-existent, archetypal, Forms or Ideas. The Stoics, and others who defended the same opinion afterwards, seem to have disconnected it from this latter doctrine.]

[Footnote 3: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C, 391 A.]

[Side-note: Argument of Sokrates against Hermogenes--all proceedings of nature are conducted according to fixed laws--speaking and naming among the rest.]

Sokrates, refuting Hermogenes, lays down the following doctrines.[4] If propositions are either true or false, names, which are parts of propositions, must be true or false also.[5] Every thing has its own fixed and determinate essence, not relative to us nor varying according to our fancy or pleasure, but existing per se as nature has arranged.[6] All agencies either by one thing upon other things, or by other things upon it, are in like manner determined by nature, independent of our will and choice. If we intend to cut or burn any substance, we must go to work, not according to our own pleasure, but in the manner that nature prescribes: by attempting to do it contrary to nature, we shall do it badly or fail altogether.[7] Now speaking is one of these agencies, and naming is a branch of speaking: what is true of other agencies is true of these also--we must name things, not according to our own will and pleasure, but in the way that nature prescribes that they shall be named.[8] Farther, each agency must be performed by its appropriate instrument: cutting by the axe, boring by the gimlet, weaving by the bodkin. The name is the instrument of naming, whereby we communicate information and distinguish things from each other. It is a didactic instrument: to be employed well, it must be in the hands of a properly qualified person for the purpose of teaching.[9] Not every man, but only the professional craftsman, is competent to fabricate the instruments of cutting and weaving. In like manner, not every man is competent to make a name: no one is competent except the lawgiver or the gifted name-maker, the rarest of all existing artists.[10]

[Footnote 4: Aristot. De Interpretat. ii. 1-2: [Greek: O)/noma me\n ou)=n e)sti\ phônê\ sêmantikê\ kata\ sunthê/kên a)/neu chro/nou . . . to\ de\ kata\ sunthê/kên, o(/ti phu/sei tô=n o)noma/tôn ou)de/n e)stin], &c.

This is the same doctrine which Plato puts into the mouth of Hermogenes (Kratylus, p. 384 E), and which Sokrates himself, in the latter half of the dialogue, admits as true to a large extent: that is, he admits that names are significant [Greek: kata\ sunthê/kên], though he does not deny that they are or may be significant [Greek: phu/sei].

[Greek: To\ a)po\ tau)toma/tou] (p. 397 A) is another phrase for expressing the opinion opposed to [Greek: o)noma/tôn o)rtho/tês].]

[Footnote 5: Plato, Kratyl. p. 385.

Here too, Aristotle affirms the contrary: he says (with far more exactness than Plato) that propositions alone are true or false; and that a name taken by itself is neither. (De Interpret. i. 2.)

The mistake of Plato in affirming Names to be true or false, is analogous to that which we read in the Philêbus, where Pleasures are distinguished as true and false.]

[Footnote 6: Plato, Kratyl. p. 386 D. [Greek: dê=lon dê\ o(/ti au)ta\ au(tô=n ou)si/an e)/chonta/ tina be/baio/n e)sti ta\ pra/gmata, ou) pro\s ê(ma=s ou)de\ u(ph' ê(mô=n, e)lko/mena a)/nô kai\ ka/tô tô=| ê(mete/rô| phanta/smati, a)lla\ kath' au(ta\ pro\s tê\n au(tôn ou)si/an e)/chonta ê(=|per pe/phuken.]]

[Footnote 7: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 A.]

[Footnote 8: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. [Greek: Ou)kou=n kai\ to\ o)noma/zein pra=xis ti/s e)stin, ei)/per kai\ to\ le/gein pra=xis tis ê)=n peri\ ta\ pra/gmata? . . . Ai( de\ pra/xeis e)pha/nêsan ê(mi=n ou) pro\s ê(ma=s ou)=sai, a)ll' au(tô=n tina i)di/an phu/sin e)/chousai? . . . Ou)kou=n kai\ o)nomaste/on ê(=| pe/phuke ta\ pra/gmata o)noma/zein te kai\ o)noma/zesthai, kai\ ô(=|, a)ll' ou)ch ê(=| a)\n ê(mei=s boulêthô=men, ei)/per ti toi=s e)/mprosthen me/llei o(mologou/menon ei)=nai? kai\ ou(/tô me\n a)\n ple/on ti poioi=men kai\ o)noma/zoimen, a)/llôs de\ ou)/?]

Speaking and naming are regarded by Plato as acts whereby the thing (spoken of or) named is acted upon or suffers. So in the Sophistês (p. 248) he considers Knowing as an act performed, whereby the thing known suffers. Deuschle (Die Platonische Sprach-philosophie, p. 59, Marpurg. 1859) treats this comparison made by Plato between naming and material agencies, as if it were mere banter--and even indifferent banter. Schleiermacher in his note thinks it seriously meant and Platonic; and I fully agree with him (Schl. p. 456).]

[Footnote 9: Plato, Kratyl. p. 388 C. [Greek: O)/noma a)/ra didaskaliko/n ti/ e)stin o)/rganon, kai\ diakritiko\n tê=s ou)si/as, ô(/sper kerki\s u(pha/smatos.] See Boethius ap. Schol. ad Aristot. Interp. p. 108, a. 40. Aristotle (De Interpr. iv. 3) says: [Greek: e)/sti de\ lo/gos a(/pas me\n sêmantiko/s, ou)ch ô(s o)/rganon de/, a)lla\ kata\ sunthê/kên.] Several even of the Platonic critics consider Plato's choice of the metaphor [Greek: o)/rganon] as inappropriate: but modern writers on logic and psychology often speak of names as "instruments of thought".]

[Footnote 10: Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 A. [Greek: o( nomothe/tês, o(\s dê\ tô=n dêmiourgô=n spaniô/tatos e)n a)nthrô=pois gi/gnetai.]]

[Side-note: The name is a didactic instrument; fabricated by the law-giver upon the type of the Name-Form, and employed as well as appreciated, by the philosopher.]

To what does the lawgiver look when he frames a name? Compare the analogy of other instruments. The artisan who constructs a bodkin or shuttle for weaving, has present to his mind as a model, the Idea or Form of the bodkin--the self-existent bodkin of Nature herself. If a broken shuttle is to be replaced, it is this Idea or type, not the actual broken instrument, which he seeks to copy. Whatever may be the variety of web for which the shuttle is destined, he modifies the new instrument accordingly: but all of them must embody the Form or Idea of the shuttle. He cannot choose another type according to his own pleasure: he must embody the type, prescribed by nature, in the iron, wood, or other material of which the instrument is made.[11]

[Footnote 11: Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 B-C. [Greek: au)to\ o( e)/sti kerki/s . . . pa/sas me\n dei= to\ tê=s kerki/dos e)/chein ei)=dos . . . ou)ch oi(=on a)\n au)to\s boulê/thê, a)ll' oi(=on e)pephu/kei.]]

So about names: the lawgiver, in distributing names, must look to the Idea, Form, or type--the self-existent name of Nature--and must embody this type, as it stands for each different thing, in appropriate syllables. The syllables indeed may admit of great variety, just as the material of which the shuttle is made may be diversified: but each aggregate of syllables, whether Hellenic or barbaric, must embody the essential Name-Idea or Type.[12] The lawgiver[13] ought to know, enumerate, and classify all the sorts of things on the one hand, and all the varieties of letters or elements of language on the other; distinguishing the special significative power belonging to each letter. He ought then to construct his words, and adapt each to signify that with which it is naturally connected. Who is to judge whether this process has been well or ill performed? Upon that point, the judge is, the professional man who uses the instrument. It is for the working weaver to decide whether the shuttle given to him is well or ill made. To have a good ship and rudder, it must be made by a professional builder, and appreciated by a professional pilot or steersman. In like manner, the names constructed by the lawgiver must be appreciated by the man who is qualified by training or study to use names skilfully: that is, by the dialectician or philosopher, competent to ask and answer questions.[14]

[Footnote 12: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 389 D, 390 A. [Greek: to\ e(ka/stô| phu/sei pephuko\s o)/noma to\n nomothe/tên e)kei=non ei)s tou\s phtho/ggous kai\ ta\s sullaba\s dei= e)pi/stasthai tithe/nai, kai\ ble/ponta pro\s au)to\ e)kei=no o(\ e)/stin o)/noma, pa/nta ta\ o)no/mata poiei=n te kai\ ti/thesthai, ei) me/llei ku/rios ei)=nai o)noma/tôn the/tês. . . .

Ou(/tôs a)xiô/seis kai\ to\n nomothe/tên to/n te e)ntha/de kai\ to\n e)n toi=s barba/rois, e(/ôs a)\n to\ tou= o)no/matos ei)=dos a)podidô=| to\ prosê=kon e(ka/stô| e)n o(poiaisou=n sullabai=s, ou)de\n chei/rô nomothe/tên ei)=nai to\n e)ntha/de ê)\ to\n o(pouou=n a)/llothi?]]

[Footnote 13: Plato, Kratyl. p. 424 D-E.]

[Footnote 14: Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 C.]

[Side-note: Names have an intrinsic aptitude for signifying one thing and not another.]

It is the fact then, though many persons may think it ridiculous, that names--or the elementary constituents and letters, of which names are composed--have each an intrinsic and distinctive aptitude, fitting them to signify particular things.[15] Names have thus a standard with reference to which they are correct or incorrect. If they are to be correct, they cannot be given either by the freewill of an ordinary individual, or even by the convention of all society. They can be affixed only by the skilled lawgiver, and appreciated only by the skilled dialectician.

[Footnote 15: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425-426.]

[Side-note: Forms of Names, as well as Forms of things nameable--essence of the Nomen, to signify the Essence of its Nominatum.]

Such is the theory here laid down by Sokrates respecting Names. It is curious as illustrating the Platonic vein of speculation. It enlarges to an extreme point Plato's region of the absolute and objective. Not merely each thing named, but each name also, is in his view an Ens absolutum; not dependent upon human choice--not even relative (so he alleges) to human apprehension. Each name has its own self-existent Idea, Form, or Type, the reproduction or copy of which is imperative. The Platonic intelligible world included Ideas of things, and of names correlative to them: just as it included Ideas of master and slave correlative to each other. It contained Noumena of names, as well as Noumena of things.[16] The essence of the name was, to be significant of the essence of the thing named: though such significance admitted of diversity, multiplication, or curtailment, in the letters or syllables wherein it was embodied.[17] The name became significant, by imitation or resemblance: that name was right, the essence of which imitated the essence of the thing named.[18] The vocal mimic imitates sounds, the painter imitates the colours: the name-giver imitates in letters or syllables, the essence of colours, sounds, and every thing else which is nameable.

[Footnote 16: Plato, Parmenid. p. 133 E.]

[Footnote 17: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393 D, 432.]

[Footnote 18: Plato, Kratyl. p. 422 D. [Greek: tô=n o)noma/tôn ê( o)rtho/tês toiau/tê tis e)bou/leto ei)=nai, oi(=a dêlou=n oi(=on e(/kasto/n e)sti tô=n o)/ntôn.]--423 D: [Greek: ou) kai\ ou)si/a dokei= soi ei)=nai e(ka/stô|, ô(/sper kai\ chrô=ma kai\ a(\ nu=n dê\ e)le/gomen? prô=ton au)tô=| tô=| chrô/mati kai\ tê=| phônê=| ou)k e)/stin ou)si/a tis e(kate/rô| au)tô=n kai\ toi=s a)/llois pa=sin, o(/sa êxi/ôtai tau/tês tê=s prosrê/seôs tou= ei)=nai? . . . Ti/ ou)=n?** ei)/ tis au)to\ tou=to mimei=sthai du/naito, e(ka/stou** tê\n ou)si/an, gra/mmasi/ te kai\ sullabai=s, a)=r' ou)k a)\n dêloi= e(/kaston o(\ e)/stin?] Compare p. 433.

The story given by Herodotus (ii. 2) about the experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, is curious. He wished to find out whether the Egyptians or the Phrygians were the oldest or first of mankind: he accordingly caused two children to be brought up without having a word spoken to them, with a view to ascertain what language they would come to by nature. At the age of two years they uttered the Phrygian word signifying bread. Psammetichus was then satisfied that the Phrygians were the first of mankind.

This story undoubtedly proceeds upon the assumption that there is one name which naturally suggests itself for each object. But when M. Renan says that the assumption is the same "as Plato has developed with so much subtlety in the Kratylus," I do not agree with him. The Absolute Name-Form or Essence, discernible only by the technical Lawgiver, is something very different. See M. Renan, De l'Origine du Langage, ch. vi. p. 146, 2nd ed.]

Another point here is peculiar to Plato. The Name-Giver must provide names such as can be used with effect by the dialectician or philosopher: who is the sole competent judge whether the names have genuine rectitude or not.[19] We see from hence that the aspirations of Plato went towards a philosophical language fit for those who conversed with forms or essences: something like (to use modern illustrations) a technical nomenclature systematically constructed for the expositions of men of science: such as that of Chemistry, Botany, Mineralogy, &c. Assuredly no language actually spoken among men, has ever been found suitable for this purpose without much artificial help.[20]

[Footnote 19: Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 D. Respecting the person called [Greek: o( dialektiko/s], whom Plato describes as grasping Ideas, or Forms, Essences, and employing nothing else in his reasoning--[Greek: lo/gon didou\s kai\ lamba/nôn tê=s ou)si/as]--see Republic, vi. p. 511 B, vii. pp. 533-534-537 C.]

[Footnote 20: Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 A. [Greek: o( peri\ o)noma/tôn techniko/s], &c.]

[Side-note: Exclusive competence of a privileged lawgiver, to discern these essences, and to apportion names rightly.]

As this theory of naming is a deduction from Plato's main doctrine of absolute or self-existing Ideas, so it also illustrates (to repeat what was said in the last chapter) his recognition of professional skill and of competence vested exclusively in a gifted One or Few: which he ranks as the sole producing cause of Good or the Best, setting it in contrast with those two causes which he considers as productive of Evil, or at any rate of the Inferior or Second-Best: 1. The One or Few, who are ungifted and unphilosophical: perhaps ambitious pretenders. 2. The spontaneous, unbespoken inspirations, conventions, customs, or habits, which grow up without formal mandate among the community. To find the right name of each thing, is no light matter, nor within the competence of any one or many ordinary men. It can only be done by one of the few privileged lawgivers. Plato even glances at the necessity of a superhuman name-giver: though he deprecates the supposition generally, as a mere evasion or subterfuge, introduced to escape the confession of real ignorance.[21]

[Footnote 21: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397, 425, 438.]

[Side-note: Counter-Theory, which Sokrates here sets forth and impugns--the Protagorean doctrine--Homo Mensura.]

In laying down the basis of his theory respecting names, Plato states another doctrine as opposed to it: viz., the Protagorean doctrine--Man is the Measure of all things. I have already said something about this doctrine, in reviewing the Theætêtus, where Plato impugns it: but as he here impugns it again, by arguments in part different--a few words more will not be misplaced.

The doctrine of Protagoras maintains that all things are relative to the percipient, cogitant, concipient, mind: that all Object is implicated with a Subject: that as things appear to me, so they are to me--as they appear to you, so they are to you. Plato denies this, and says: "All things have a fixed essence of their own, absolutely and in themselves, not relative to any percipient or cogitant--nor dependent upon any one's appreciative understanding, or emotional susceptibility, or will. Things are so and so, without reference to us as sentient or cogitant beings: and not only the things are thus independent and absolute, but all their agencies are so likewise--agencies either by them or upon them. Cutting, burning, speaking, naming, &c., must be performed in a certain determinate way, whether we prefer it or not. A certain Name belongs, by Nature or absolutely, to a certain thing, whether we choose it or not: it is not relative to any adoption by us, either individually or collectively."

This Protagorean theory is here set forth by the Platonic Sokrates as the antithesis or counter-theory, to that which he is himself advancing, viz.--That Names are significant by nature and not by agreement of men:--That each Nomen is tied to its Nominatum by a natural and indissoluble bond. His remarks imply, that those who do not accept this last-mentioned theory must agree with Protagoras. But such an antithesis is noway necessary: since (not to speak of Hermogenes himself in this very dialogue) we find also that Aristotle--who maintains that Names are significant by convention and not by nature--dissents also from the theory of Protagoras: and would have rested his dissent from it on very different grounds.

[Side-note: Objection by Sokrates--That Protagoras puts all men on a level as to wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance.]

This will show us--what I have already remarked in commenting on the Theætêtus--that Plato has not been very careful in appreciating the real bearing of the Protagorean doctrine. He impugns it here by the same argument which we also read in the Theætêtus. "Everyone admits" (he says) "that there are some men wise and good--others foolish and wicked. Now if you admit this, you disallow the Protagorean doctrine. If I contend that as things appear to me, so they truly are to me--as things appear to you or to him, so they truly are to you or to him--I cannot consistently allow that any one man is wiser than any other. Upon such a theory, all men are put upon the same level of knowledge or ignorance."

But the premisses of Plato here do not sustain his inference.

[Side-note: Objection unfounded--What the Protagorean theory really affirms--Belief always relative to the believer's mind.]

The Protagorean doctrine is, when stated in its most general terms,--That every man is and must be his own measure of truth or falsehood--That what appears to him true, is true to him, however it may appear to others--That he cannot by any effort step out of or beyond his own individual belief conviction, knowledge--That all his Cognita, Credita, Percepta, Cogitata, &c., imply himself as Cognoscens, Credens, Percipiens, Cogitans, inseparably and indivisibly--That in affirming an object, he himself is necessarily present as affirming subject, and that Object and Subject are only two sides of the same indivisible fact[22]--That though there are some matters which all men agree in believing, there is no criterion at once infallible and universally recognised, in matters where they dissent: moreover, the matters believed are just as much relative where all agree, as where some disagree.

[Footnote 22: M. Destutt Tracy observes, Logique, ch. ix. p. 347, ed. 1825:

"En effet, on ne saurait trop le redire, chacun de nous, et même tout être animé quelconque, est pour lui-même le centre de tout. Il ne perçoit par un sentiment direct et une conscience intime, que ce qui affecte et émeut sa sensibilité. Il ne conçoit et ne connaît son existence que par ce qu'il sent, et celle des autres êtres que parce qu'ils lui font sentir. Il n'y a de réel pour lui que ses perceptions, ses affections, ses idées: et tout ce qu'il peut jamais savoir, n'est toujours que des consequences et des combinaisons de ces premières perceptions ou idees."

The doctrine of the Sceptical philosophers, is explicitly announced by Sextus Empiricus as his personal belief: that which appears true to him, as far as his enquiry had reached. The passage deserves to be cited.

Sextus Empir. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. i. Sect. 197-199.

[Greek: O(/tan ou)=n ei)/pê| o( skeptiko\s "ou)de\n o(ri/zô" . . . tou=to/ phêsi le/gôn to\ e(autô=| phaino/menon peri\ tô=n prokeime/nôn, ou)k a)paggeltikô=s, meta\ pepoithê/seôs a)pophaino/menos, a)ll' o(\ pa/schei, diêgou/menos. . . . Kai\ ô(/sper o(le/gôn "peripatô=," ou(/tôs o( le/gôn "pa/nta e)sti\n a)o/rista" sussêmai/nei kath' ê(ma=s to\ ô(s pro\s e)me ê)\ ô(s e)moi\ phai/netai; ô(s ei)=nai to\ lego/menon toiou=ton "o(/sa e)pêlthon tô=n dogmatikô=s zêtoume/nôn, toiau=ta/ moi phai/netai_, ô(s mêde\n au)tô=n tou= machome/nou prou)/chein moi\ dokei=n kata\ pi/stin ê)\ a)pisti/an".]]

[Side-note: Each man believes others to be wiser on various points than himself--Belief on authority--not inconsistent with the affirmation of Protagoras.]

This doctrine is not refuted by the fact, that every man believes others to be wiser than himself on various points. A man is just as much a measure to himself when he acts upon the advice of others, or believes a fact upon the affirmation of others, as when he judges upon his own unassisted sense or reasoning. He is a measure to himself when he agrees with others, as much as when he disagrees with them. Opinions of others, or facts attested by others, may count as materials determining his judgment; but the judgment is and must be his own. The larger portion of every man's knowledge rests upon the testimony of others; nevertheless the facts thus reported become portions of his knowledge, generating conclusions in him and relatively to him. I believe the narrative of travellers, respecting parts of the globe which I have never seen: I adopt the opinion of A a lawyer, and of B a physician, on matters which I have not studied: I understand facts which I did not witness, from the description of those who did witness them. In all these cases the act of adoption is my own, and the grounds of belief are relative to my state of mind. Another man may mistrust completely the authorities which I follow: just as I mistrust the authority of Mahomet or Confucius, or various others, regarded as infallible by a large portion of mankind. The grounds of belief are to a certain extent similar, to a certain extent dissimilar, in different men's minds. Authority is doubtless a frequent ground of belief; but it is essentially variable and essentially relative to the believer. Plato himself, in many passages, insists emphatically upon the dissensions in mankind respecting the question--"Who are the good and wise men?" He tells us that the true philosopher is accounted by the bulk of mankind foolish and worthless.

[Side-note: Analogy of physical processes (cutting and burning) appealed to by Sokrates--does not sustain his inference against Protagoras.]

In the Kratylus, Sokrates says (and I agree with him) that there are laws of nature respecting the processes of cutting and burning: and that any one who attempts to cut or burn in a way unconformable to those laws, will fail in his purpose. This is true, but it proves nothing against Protagoras. It is an appeal to a generalization from physical facts, resting upon experience and induction--upon sensation and inference which we and others, Protagoras as well as Plato, have had, and which we believe to be common to all. We know this fact, or have a full and certain conviction of it; but we are not brought at all nearer to the Absolute (i.e., to the Object without Subject) which Plato's argument requires. The analogy rather carries us away from the Absolute: for cutting and burning, with their antecedent conditions, are facts of sense: and Plato himself admits, to a great extent, that the facts of sense are relative. All experience and induction, and all belief founded thereupon, are essentially relative. The experience may be one common to all mankind, and upon which all are unanimous:[23] but it is not the less relative to each individual of the multitude. What is relative to all, continues to be relative to each: the fact that all sentient individuals are in this respect alike, does not make it cease to be relative, and become absolute. What I see and hear in the theatre is relative to me, though it may at the same time be relative to ten thousand other spectators, who are experiencing like sensations. Where all men think or believe alike, it may not be necessary for common purposes to distinguish the multiplicity of individual thinking subjects: yet the subjects are nevertheless multiple, and the belief, knowledge, or fact, is relative to each of them, whether all agree, or whether beliefs are many and divergent. We cannot suppress ourselves as sentient or cogitant subjects, nor find any locus standi for Object pure and simple, apart from the ground of relativity. And the Protagorean dictum brings to view these subjective conditions, as being essential, no less than the objective, to belief and disbelief.

[Footnote 23: Proklus, in his Scholia on the Kratylus, p. 32, ed. Boisson, cites the argument used by Aristotle against Plato on this very subject of names--[Greek: ta\ me\n phu/sei, para\ pa=si ta\ au)ta/; ta\ de\ o)no/mata ou) para\ pa=si ta\ au)ta/; ô/ste ta\ phu/sei o)/nta ou)/k e)stin o)no/mata, kai\ ta\ o)no/mata ou)k ei)si phu/sei.] Ammonius ad Aristot. De Interpretat. p. 100, a. 28, Schol. Bekk. Sextus Empiricus adv. Mathemat. i. 145-147, p. 247, Fab.

Plato had assimilated naming to cutting and burning. Aristotle denies the analogy: he says that cutting and burning are the same to all, or are by nature: naming is not the same to all, and is therefore not by nature.

We find here the test pointed out to distinguish what is by nature (that which Plato calls the [Greek: ou)si/an be/baion tô=n pragma/tôn]--p. 386 E),--viz. That it is the same to all or among all. What it is to one individual, it is to another also. There are a multitude of different judging subjects, but no dissentient subjects: myself, and in my belief all other subjects, are affected alike. This is the true and real Objective: a particular fact of sense, where Subject is not eliminated altogether, but becomes a constant quantity, and therefore escapes separate notice. An Objective absolute (i.e., without Subject altogether) is an impossibility.

In the Aristotelian sense of [Greek: phu/sei], it would be correct to say that Language, or Naming in genere, is natural to man. No human society has yet been found without some language--some names--some speech employed and understood by each individual member. But many different varieties of speech will serve the purpose, not indeed with equal perfection, yet tolerably: enough to enable a society to get on. The uniformity ([Greek: to\ phu/sei]) here ceases. To a certain extent, the objects and agencies which are named, are the same in all societies: to a certain extent different. If we were acquainted with all the past facts respecting the different languages which have existed or do exist on the globe, we should be able to assign the reason which brought each particular Nomen into association with its Nominatum. But this past history is lost.]

[Side-note: Reply of Protagoras to the Platonic objections.]

Protagoras would have agreed with Plato as to combustion--that there were certain antecedent conditions under which he fully expected it, and certain other conditions under which he expected with confidence that it would not occur. Only he would have declared this (assuming him to speak conformably to his own theory) to be his own full belief and conviction, derived from certain facts and comparisons of sense, which he also knew to be shared by most other persons. He would have pronounced farther, that those who held opposite opinions were in his judgment wrong: but he would have recognised that their opinion was true to themselves, and that their belief must be relative to causes operating upon their minds. Farthermore, he would have pointed out, that combustion itself, with its antecedents, were facts of sense, relative to individual sentients and observers, remembering and comparing what they had observed. This would have been the testimony of Protagoras (always assuming him to speak in conformity with his own theory), but it would not have satisfied Plato: who would have required a peremptory, absolute affirmation, discarding all relation to observers or observed facts, and leaving no scope for error or fallibility.

[Side-note: Sentiments of Belief and Disbelief, common to all men--Grounds of belief and disbelief, different with different men and different ages.]

Those who agree with Plato on this question, impugn the doctrine of Protagoras as effacing all real, intrinsic, distinction between truth and falsehood. Such objectors make it a charge against Protagoras, that he does not erect his own mind into a peremptory and infallible measure for all other minds.[24] He expressly recognises the distinction, so far as his own mind is concerned: he admits that other men recognise it also, each for himself. Nevertheless, to say that all men recognise one and the same objective distinction between truth and falsehood, would be to contradict palpable facts. Each man has a standard, an ideal of truth in his own mind: but different men have different standards. The grounds of belief, though in part similar with all men, are to a great extent dissimilar also: they are dissimilar even with the same man, at different periods of his life and circumstances. What all men have in common is the feeling of belief and the feeling of disbelief: the matters believed or disbelieved, as well as the ideal standard to which any new matter presented for belief or disbelief is referred, differ considerably. By rational discussion--by facts and reasonings set forth on both sides, as in the Platonic dialogues--opinions may be overthrown or modified: dissentients may be brought into agreement, or at least each may be rendered more fully master of the case on both sides. But this dialectic, the Platonic question and answer, is itself an appeal to the free action of the individual mind. The questioner starts from premisses conceded by the respondent. He depends upon the acquiescence of the respondent for every step taken in advance. Such a proceeding is relative, not absolute: coinciding with the Protagorean formula rather than with the Platonic negation of it.[25] No man ever claimed the right of individual judgment more emphatically than Sokrates: no man was ever more special in adapting his persuasions to the individual persons with whom he conversed.

[Footnote 24: To illustrate the impossibility of obtaining any standard absolute and purely objective, without reference to any judging Subject, I had transcribed a passage from Steinthal's work on the Classification of Human languages; but I find it too long for a note.

Steinthal, Charakteristik der Hauptsächlichen Typen des Sprachbaues, 2nd ed. Berlin, 1860, pp. 313-314-315.]

[Footnote 25: See the striking passages in the Gorgias, pp. 472 B, 474 B, 482 B; Theætêtus, p. 171 D.

Also in proclaiming the necessity of specialty of adaptation to individual minds--Plat. Phædr. pp. 271-272, 277 B.]

[Side-note: Protagoras did not affirm, that Belief depended upon the will or inclination of each individual but that it was relative to the circumstances of each individual mind.]

The grounds of belief, according to Protagoras, relative to the individual, are not the same with all men at all times. But it does not follow (nor does Protagoras appear to have asserted) that they vary according to the will or inclination of the individual. Plato, in impugning this doctrine, reasons as if these two things were one and the same--as if, according to Protagoras, a man believed whatever he chose.[26] This, however, is not an exact representation of the doctrine "Homo Mensura": which does not assert the voluntary or the arbitrary, but simply the relative as against the absolute. What a man believes does not depend upon his own will or choice: it depends upon an aggregate of circumstances, partly peculiar to himself, partly common to him with other persons more or fewer in number:[27] upon his age, organisation, and temperament--his experience, education, historical and social position--his intellectual powers and acquirements--his passions and sentiments of every kind, &c. These and other ingredients--analogous, yet neither the same nor combined in the same manner, even in different individuals of the same time and country, much less in those of different times and countries--compose the aggregate determining grounds of belief or disbelief in every one. Each man has in his mind an ideal standard of truth and falsehood: but that ideal standard, never exactly the same in any two men, nor in the same man at all times, often varies in different men to a prodigious extent. Now it is to this standard in the man's own mind that those reasoners refer who maintain that belief is relative. They do not maintain, that it is relative simply to his wishes, or that he believes and disbelieves what he chooses.

[Footnote 26: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 387-389, where [Greek: pro\s ê(ma=s] is considered as equivalent to [Greek: ô(s a)\n ê(mei=s boulô/metha--ê(=| a)\n ê(mei=s boulê/thômen]--both of them being opposed to [Greek: oi(=on e)pephu/kei--to\ kata\ phu/sin--i)di/an au)tô=n phu/sin e)/chousai.]

The error here noted is enumerated by by Mr. John Stuart Mill, among the specimens of Fallacies of Confusion, in his System of Logic, Book v. ch. vii. § 1: "The following is an argument of Descartes to prove, in his à priori manner, the being of a God. The conception, says he, of an infinite Being proves the real existence of such a Being. For if there is not really any such Being, I must have made the conception: but if I could make it, I can also unmake it--which evidently is not true: therefore there must be, externally to myself, an archetype from which the conception was derived. In this argument (which, it may be observed, would equally prove the real existence of ghosts and of witches) the ambiguity is in the pronoun I; by which, in one place, is to be understood my will--in another, the laws of my nature. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, had no original without, the conclusion would unquestionably follow that I made it--that is, the laws of my nature must have somehow evolved it: but that my will made it, would not follow. Now when Descartes afterwards adds that I cannot unmake the conception, he means that I cannot get rid of it by an act of my will--which is true, but is not the proposition required. I can as much unmake this conception as I can any other: no conception which I have once had, can I ever dismiss by mere volition: but what some of the laws of my nature have produced, other laws, or those same laws in other circumstances, may, and often do, subsequently efface."]

[Footnote 27: To show how constantly this Protagorean dictum is misconceived, as if Protagoras had said that things were to each individual what he was pleased or chose to represent them as being, I transcribe the following passage from Lassalle's elaborate work on Herakleitus (vol. ii. p. 381):--"Des Protagoras Prinzip ist es, dass überhaupt Nichts Objektives ist; dass vielmehr alles Beliebige was Einem scheint, auch für ihn sei. Dies Selbstsetzen des Subjekts ist die einzige Wahrheit der Dinge, welche an sich selbst Nichts Objektives haben, sondern zur gleichgültigen Fläche geworden sind, auf die das Subjekt willkührlich und beliebig seine Charaktere schreibt."

Protagoras does not (as is here asserted) deny the Objective: he only insists on looking at it in conjunction with, or measured by, some Subject; and that Subject, not simply as desiring or preferring, but clothed in all its attributes.]

[Side-note: Facts of sense--some are the same to all sentient subjects, others are different to different subjects. Grounds of unanimity.]

When Plato says that combustibility and secability of objects are properties fixed and determinate,[28] this is perfectly true, as meaning that a certain proportion of the facts of sense affect in the same way the sentient and appreciative powers of each individual, determining the like belief in every man who has ever experienced them. Measuring and weighing are sensible facts of this character: seen alike by all, and conclusive proofs to all. But this implies, to a certain point, fundamental uniformity in the individual sentients and judges. Where such condition is wanting--where there is a fundamental difference in the sensible apprehension manifested by different individuals--the unanimity is wanting also. Such is the case in regard to colours and other sensations: witness the peculiar vision of Dalton and many others. The unanimity in the first case, the discrepancy in the second, is alike an aggregate of judgments, each individual, distinct, and relative. You pronounce an opponent to be in error: but if you cannot support your opinion by evidence or authority which satisfies his senses or his reason, he remains unconvinced. Your individual opinion stands good to you; his opinion stands good to him. You think that he ought to believe as you do, and in certain cases you feel persuaded that he will be brought to that result by future experience, which of course must be relative to him and to his appreciative powers. He entertains the like persuasion in regard to you.

[Footnote 28: When Plato asserts not only that Objects are absolute and not relative to any Subject--but that the agencies or properties of Objects are also absolute--he carries the doctrine farther than modern defenders of the absolute. M. Cousin, in the eighth and ninth Lectures of his Cours d'Hist. de la Philosophie Morale au 18me Siècle, lays down the contrary, maintaining that objects and essences alone are absolute, though unknowable; but that their agencies are relative and knowable.

"Nous savons qu'il exists quelque chose hors de nous, parceque nous ne pouvons expliquer nos perceptions sans les rattacher à des causes distinctes de nous mêmes: nous savons de plus que ces causes, dont nous ne connaissons pas d'ailleurs l'essence, produisent les effets les plus variables, les plus divers, et même les plus contraires, selon qu'elles rencontrent telle nature ou telle disposition du sujet. Mais savons-nous quelque chose de plus? et même, vu le caractère indéterminé des causes que nous concevons dans les corps, y-a-t-il quelque chose de plus à savoir? Y-a-t-il lieu de nous enquérir si nous percevons les choses telles qu'elles sont? Non, évidemment. . . Je ne dis pas que le problème est insoluble: je dis qu'il est absurde, et renferme une contradiction. Nous ne savons pas ce que ces causes sont en elles-mêmes, et la raison nous défend de chercher à les connaître: mais il est bien évident à priori qu'elles ne sont pas en elles-mêmes ce qu'elles sont par rapport à nous, puisque la présence du sujet modifie nécessairement leur action. Supprimez tout sujet sentant, il est certain que ces causes agiraient encore, puisqu'elles continueraient d'exister: mais elles agiraient autrement; elles seraient encore des qualités et des propriétés, mais qui ne ressembleraient à rien de ce que nous connaissons. Le feu ne manifesterait plus aucune des propriétés que nous lui connaissons: que serait-il? C'est ce que nous ne saurons jamais. C'est d'ailleurs peut-être un problème qui ne répugne pas seulement à la nature de notre esprit mais à l'essence même des choses. Quand même en effet on supprimerait par la pensée tous les sujets sentants, il faudrait encore admettre que nul corps ne manifesterait ses propriétés autrement qu'en relation avec un sujet quelconque, et dans ce cas ses propriétés ne seraient encore que relatives: en sorte qu'il me paraît fort raisonnable d'admettre que les propriétés déterminées des corps n'existent pas indépendamment d'un sujet quelconque." (2de Partie, 8me Leçon, pp. 216-218, ed. Danton et Vacherot, Bruxelles, 1841.)]

* * * * *

[Side-note: Sokrates exemplifies his theory of the Absolute Name or the Name-Form. He attempts to show the inherent rectitude of many existing names. His etymological transitions.]

It is thus that Sokrates, in the first half of the Kratylus, lays down his general theory that names have a natural and inherent propriety: and that naming is a process which cannot be performed except in one way. He at the same time announces that his theory rests upon a principle opposed to the "Homo Mensura" of Protagoras. He then proceeds to illustrate his doctrine by exemplification of many particular names, which are alleged to manifest a propriety of signification in reference to the persons or matters to which they are applied. Many of these are proper names, but some are common names or appellatives. Plato regards the proper names as illustrating, even better than the common, the doctrine of inherent rectitude in naming: especially the names of the Gods, with respect to the use of which Plato was himself timidly scrupulous--and the names reported by Homer as employed by the Gods themselves. We must remember that nearly all Grecian proper names had some meaning: being compounds or derivatives from appellative nouns.

The proper names are mostly names of Gods or Heroes: then follow the names of the celestial bodies (conceived as Gods), of the elements, of virtues and vices, &c. All of them, however, both the proper and the common names, are declared to be compound, or derivative; presupposing other simple and primitive names from which they are formed.[29] Sokrates declares the fundamental theory on which the primitive roots rest; and indicates the transforming processes, whereby many of the names are deduced or combined from their roots. But these processes, though sometimes reasonable enough, are in a far greater number of instances forced, arbitrary, and fanciful. The transitions of meaning imagined, and the structural transformations of words, are alike strange and violent.[30]

[Footnote 29: See the Introduction to Pape's Wörterbuch der Griechischen Eigennamen.

Thus Proklus observes:--"The recklessness about proper names, is shown in the case of the man who gave to his son the name of Athanasius" (Proklus, Schol. ad Kratyl. p. 5, ed. Boiss.) Proklus adopts the distinction between divine and human names, citing the authority of Plato in Kratylus. The words of Proklus are remarkable, ad Timæum, ii. p. 197. Schneid. [Greek: Oi)kei=a ga/r e)stin o)no/mata pa/sê| ta/xei tô=n pragma/tôn, thei=a me\n toi=s thei/ois, dianoêta\ de\ toi=s dianoêtoi=s, doxasta\ de\ toi=s doxastoi=s.] See Timæus, p. 29 B. Compare also Kratylus, p. 400 E, and Philêbus, p. 12 C.

When Plato (Kratylus, pp. 391-392; compare Phædrus, p. 252 A) cites the lines of Homer mentioning appellations bestowed by the Gods, I do not understand him, as Gräfenhahn and others do, to speak in mockery, but bonâ fide. The affirmation of Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromat. i. 104) gives a probable account of Plato's belief:--[Greek: O( Pla/tôn kai\ toi=s theoi=s dialekto\n a)pone/mei tina/, ma/lista me\n a)po\ tô=n o)neira/tôn tekmairo/menos kai\ tô=n chrêsmô=n.] See Gräfenhahn, Gesch. der Klassischen Philologie, vol. i. p. 176.

When we read the views of some learned modern philologists, such as Godfrey Hermann, we cannot be surprised that many Greeks in the Platonic age should believe in an [Greek: o)rtho/tês o)noma/tôn] applicable to their Gods and Heroes:--"Unde intelligitur, ex nominibus naturam et munia esse cognoscenda Deorum: Nec Deorum tantum, sed etiam heroum, omninoque rerum omnium, nominibus quæ propria vocantur appellatarum" (De Mythologia Græcorum Antiquissimâ--in Opuscula, vol. ii. p. 167).

"Bei euch, Ihr Herrn, kann man das Wesen Gewöhnlich aus dem Namen lesen," &c. Goethe, Faust.

See a remarkable passage in Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, c. 22, p. 1119 E, respecting the essential rectitude and indispensable employment of the surnames and appellations of the Gods.

The supposition of a mysterious inherent relation, between Names and the things named, has found acceptance among expositors of many different countries.

M. Jacob Salvador (Histoire des Institutions de Moïse, Liv. x., ch. ii.; vol. iii. p. 136) says respecting the Jewish Cabbala:--"Que dirai-je de leur Cabale? mot signifiant aussi tradition. Elle se composait originairement de tous les principes abstraits qui ne se répandent pas chez le vulgaire: elle tomba bientôt dans la folie. Cacher quelques idées metaphysiques sous les figures les plus bizarres, et prendre ensuite une peine infinie pour retrouver ces idées premières: s'imaginer qu'il existe entre les noms et les choses une corrélation inévitable, et que la contexture littérale des livres sacrés par exemple, doit éclairer sur l'essence même et sur tous les secrets du Dieu qui les a dictés: tourmenter dès-lors chaque phrase, chaque mot, chaque lettre, avec la même ardeur qu'on en met de nos jours à décomposer et à recomposer tous les corps de la nature: enfin, après avoir établi la corrélation entre les mots et les choses, croire qu'en changeant, disposant, combinant, ces mots, on traverse de prétendus canaux d'influence qui les unissent à ces choses, et qu'on agit sur elles: voilà, ce me semble, les principales prétentions de cette espèce de science occulte, échappée de l'Égypte, qui a dévoré beaucoup de bons esprits, et qui, d'une part, donne la main à la théologie, d'autre part, à l'astrologie et aux combinaisons magiques."]

[Footnote 30: I cite various specimens of the etymologies given by Plato:--

1. [Greek: A)game/mnôn--o( a)gasto\s kata\ tê\n e)pimonê/n]--in consequence of his patience in remaining ([Greek: monê\]) with his army before Troy (p. 395 A).

2. [Greek: A)treu\s--kata\ to\ a)teire/s, kai\ kata\ to\ a)/treston, kai\ kata\ to\ a)têro/n] (p. 395 C).

3. [Greek: Pe/lops--o( to\ e)ggu\s (pe/las) mo/non o(rô=n kai\ to\ parachrê=ma] (p. 395 D).

4. [Greek: Ta/ntalos--tala/ntatos] (p. 395 E).

5. [Greek: Zeu\s--Di/a--Zê=na--di' o(\n zê=n a)ei\ pa=si toi=s zô=sin u(pa/rchei]--ut proprie unum debuerit esse vocabulum [Greek: Diazê=na]. Stallbaum, ad. p. 396 A. Proklus admired these etymologies (ad Timæum, ii. p. 226, ed. Schneid.).

6. [Greek: Oi( theoi\]--Sun, Moon, Earth, Stars, Uranus--[Greek: a(/te au)ta\ o(rôntes pa/nta a)ei\ i)o/nta dro/mô| kai\ the/onta, a)po\ tau/tês tê=s phu/seôs tê=s tou= thei=n theou\s au)tou\s e)ponoma/sai] (p. 397 D).

7. [Greek: Dai/mones--o(/ti phro/nimoi kai\ daê/mones ê)=san, dai/monas au)tou\s ôno/masen] (Hesiod) (p. 398 B).

8. [Greek: Ê)/rôs]--either from [Greek: e)/rôs], as one sprung from the union of Gods with human females: or from [Greek: e)rôta=|n] or [Greek: ei)/rein],--from oral or rhetorical attributes, as being [Greek: r(ê/tores kai\ e)rôtêtikoi/] (p. 398 D).

9. [Greek: Di/philos--Dii+\ phi/los] (p. 399 B).

10. [Greek: A)/nthrôpos--o( a)nathrô=n a(\ o)/pôpen] (p. 399 C).

11. [Greek: Psuchê\]--a double derivation is proposed: first, [Greek: to\ a)na/psuchon], next, a second, i.e. [Greek: psuchê\ = phuse/chê, ê)\ phu/sin o)chei= kai\ e)/chei], which second is declared to be [Greek: technikô/teron], and the former to be ridiculous (pp. 399 E, 400 A-B).

12. [Greek: Sô=ma = to\ sê=ma tê=s phuchê=s], because the soul is buried in the body. Or [Greek: sô=ma], that is, preserved or guarded, by the body as by an exterior wall, in order that it may expiate wrongs of a preceding life (p. 400 C).

13. The first imposer of names was a philosopher who followed the theory of Herakleitus--perpetual flux of everything. Pursuant to this theory he gave to various Gods the names Kronos, Rhea, Tethys, &c., all signifying flux (p. 402 A-D).

14. Various derivations of the names Poseidon, Hades or Pluto, Persephonê or Pherrephatta, &c., are given (pp. 404-405); also of Apollo, so as to fit on to the four functions of the last-named God, [Greek: mousikê/, mantikê/, i)atrikê/, toxikê/] (p. 405).

15. [Greek: Mou=sa--mousikê\], from [Greek: mô=sthai] (recognised in Liddell and Scott from [Greek: ma/ô] p. 406 A). [Greek: A)phrodi/tê] from [Greek: a)phrou= ge/nesin], the Hesiodic derivation (p. 406 B-D).

16. [Greek: A)ê\r--o(/ti ai)/rei ta\ a)po\ tê=s gê=s--ê)\ o(/ti a)ei\ r(ei=--ê)\ o(/ti pneu=ma e)x au)tou= gi/gnetai r(e/ontos]--quasi [Greek: a)êto/r)r(oun. Ai)thê\r--o(/ti a)ei\ thei= peri\ to\n a)e/ra r(e/ôn] (p. 410 B).

17. [Greek: Phro/nêsis--phora=s kai\ r(ou= no/êsis u(polabei=n phora=s]. This and the following are put as derivatives from the Herakleitean theory (p. 411 D-E). [Greek: No/êsis = tou= ne/ou e)/sis. Sôphrosu/nê--sôtêri/a phronê/seôs]. This is recognised by Aristotle in the Nikom. Ethica, vi. 5.

18. [Greek: E)pistê/mê = e)pistême/nê--ô(s pherome/nois toi=s pra/gmasin e(pome/nês tê=s psuchê=s] (p. 412 A).

19. [Greek: Dikaiosu/nê--e)pi\ tê=| tou= dikai/ou sune/sei] (p. 412 C).

20. [Greek: Kaki/a = to\ kakô=s i)o/n. Deili/a--tê=s psuchê=s desmo\s i)schuro/s--o(\ dei= li/an. A)retê\ = a)eirei/tê]--that which has an easy and constant flux, or perhaps [Greek: ai(retê/] (p. 415 B-D). [Greek: Ai)schro\n = to\ a)eischorou=n--to\ a)ei\ i)/schon to\n r(ou=n] (p. 416 B). [Greek: Su/mphero\n = tê\ a(/ma phora\n tê=s psuchê=s meta\ tô=n pragma/tôn] (p. 417 A). [Greek: Lusite/loun = to\ tê=s phora=s lu/on to\ te/los] (p. 417 C-E). [Greek: Blabero\n = to\ bla/pton to\n r(ou=n].

The names of favourable import are such as designate facility of the universal flux, according to the Herakleitean theory. The names of unfavourable import designate obstruction of the flux.

21. [Greek: Zugo\n = duogo/n] (p. 418 D).

22. [Greek: Eu)phrosu/nê--a)po\ tou= eu)= pra/gmasi tê\n psuchê\n xumphe/resthai = eu)pherosu/nê] (p. 419 D).

23. [Greek: Thumo\s--a)po\ tê=s thu/seôs kai\ ze/seôs tê=s psuchê=s. E)pithumi/a--ê( e)pi\ to\n thumo\n i)ou=sa du/namis] (p. 419 E).

24. [Greek: To\ o)/n = to\ ou)= tugcha/nei zê/têma, to\ o)/noma. O)nomasto\n = o)/n, ou)= ma/sma e)sti/n. (Ma/sma = zê/têma: mai/esthai = zêtei=n)] (p. 421 A).

25. [Greek: A)lêthei/a--thei/a a)/lê], or [Greek: ê( thei/a tou= o)/ntos phora/. Pseu=dos] from [Greek: eu(/dein], with [Greek: psi=] prefixed, as being the opposite of movement and flux (p. 421 B-C).

26. Several derivations of names are given by Sokrates, as founded upon the theory opposed to Herakleitus--i.e., the theory that things were not in perpetual flux, but stationary:--

[Greek: E)pistê/mê--o(/ti i(/stêsin ê(mô=n e)pi\ toi=s pra/gmasi tê\n psuchê/n.

I(stori/a--o(/ti i(/stêsi to\n r(ou=n.

Pisto\n--i(sta=|n panta/pasi sêmai/nei.

Mnê/mê--monê\ e)n tê=| psuchê=|] (437 A-C).

27. We found before that some names of good attributes were founded on the Herakleitean theory. But there are also names of bad attributes founded on it.

[Greek: A)mathi/a = ê( tou= a(/ma theô=| i)o/ntos porei/a.

A)kolasi/a = ê( a)kolouthi/a toi=s pra/gmasin] (p. 437 C).

Sokrates contrasts the two theories of [Greek: sta/sis] and [Greek: ki/nêsis], and says that he believes the first Name-Givers to have apportioned names in conformity to the theory of [Greek: ki/nêsis], but that he thinks they were mistaken in adopting that theory (p. 439 C).]

[Side-note: These transitions appear violent to a modern reader. They did not appear so to readers of Plato until this century. Modern discovery, that they are intended as caricatures to deride the Sophists.]

Such is the light in which these Platonic etymologies appear to a modern critic. But such was not the light in which they appeared either to the ancient Platonists, or to critics earlier than the last century. The Platonists even thought them full of mysterious and recondite wisdom. Dionysius of Halikarnassus highly commends Plato for his speculations on etymology, especially in the Kratylus.[31] Plutarch cites some of the most singular etymologies in the Kratylus as serious and instructive. The modesty of the Protagorean formula becomes here especially applicable: for so complete has been the revolution of opinion, that the Platonic etymologies are now treated by most critics as too absurd to have been seriously intended by Plato, even as conjectures. It is called "a valuable discovery of modern times" (so Schleiermacher[32] terms it) that Plato meant all or most of them as mere parody and caricature. We are now told that it was not Plato who misconceived the analogies, conditions, and limits, of etymological transition, but others; whom Plato has here set himself to expose and ridicule, by mock etymologies intended to parody those which they had proposed as serious. If we ask who the persons thus ridiculed were, we learn that they were the Sophists, Protagoras, or Prodikus, with others; according to Schleiermacher, Antisthenes among them.[33]

[Footnote 31: Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verb. a. 16, p. 196, Schaefer. [Greek: ta\ kra/tista de\ ne/mô, ô(s prô/tô| to\n u(pe\r e)tumologi/as ei)sa/gonti lo/gon, Pla/tôni tô=| Sôkratikô=|, pollachê=| me\n kai\ a)/llothi, ma/lista de\ e)n tô=| Kratu/lô|.]

About Plato's etymologies, as seriously intended, see Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, p. 375 C-D-E, with the note of Wyttenbach. Harris, in his Hermes (pp. 369-370-407), alludes to the etymologies of Plato in the Kratylus as being ingenious, though disputable, but not at all as being derisory caricatures. Indeed the etymology of Scientia, which he cites from Scaliger, p. 370, is quite as singular as any in the Kratylus. Sydenham (Notes to the translation of Plato's Philêbus, p. 35) calls the Kratylus "a dialogue, in which is taught the nature of things, as well the permanent as the transient, from a supposed etymology of names and words.

I find, in the very instructive comments of Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch (Part iv. ch. 24, p. 250), a citation from St. Augustine, illustrating the view which I believe Plato to have taken of these etymologies: "Quo loco prorsus non arbitror prætereundum, quod pater Valerius animadvertit admirans, in quorundam rusticanorum (i.e., Africans, near Carthage) collocutione. Cum enim alter alteri dixisset Salus--quæsivit ab eo, qui et Latiné nosset et Punicé, quid esset Salus: responsum est, Tria. Tum ille agnoscens cum gaudio, salutem nostram esse Trinitatem, convenientiam linguarum non fortuitu sic sonuisse arbitratus est, sed occultissimâ dispensatione divinæ providentiæ--ut cum Latiné nominatur Salus, à Punicis intelligantur Tria--et cum Punici linguâ suâ Tria nominant, Latiné intelligatur Salus . . . Sed hæc verborum consonantia, sive provenerit sive provisa sit, non pugnaciter agendum est ut ei quisque consentiat, sed quantum interpretantis elegantiam hilaritas audientis admittit."

So in the etymologies of the Kratylus: Plato follows out threads of analogy, which, with indulgent hearers, he reckons will be sufficient for proof: and which, even when not accepted as proof, will be pleasing to the fancy of unbelieving hearers, as they are to his own. There is no intention to caricature: no obvious absurdities piled up with a view to caricature.]

[Footnote 32: Schleiermacher, Introduction to Kratylus, vol. iv. p. 6: "Dagegen ist viel gewonnen durch die Entdeckung neuerer Zeiten," &c. To the same purpose, Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., part ii. p. 402, edit. 2nd, and Brandis, Gesch. Gr. Röm. Phil., part ii. sect. cvii. p. 285.

Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Platon. Cratylum, p. 4, says: "Quod mirum est non esse ab iis animadversum, qui Platonem putaverunt de linguæ et vocabulorum origine hoc libro suam sententiam explicare voluisse. Isti enim adeo nihil senserunt irrisionis, ut omnia atque singula pro philosophi decretis venditarint, ideoque ei absurdissima quæque commenta affinxerint. Ita Menagius. . . . Nec Tiedemannus Argum, Dial. Plat. multo rectius judicat. Irrisionem primi senserunt Garnierius et Tennemann." &c. Stallbaum, moreover, is perpetually complaining in his notes, that the Etymological Lexicons adopt Plato's derivations as genuine. Ménage (ad Diogen. Laert. iii. 25) declares most of the etymologies of Plato in the Kratylus to be [Greek: pseude/tuma], but never hints at the supposition that they are intended as caricatures. During the centuries between Plato and Ménage, men had become more critical on the subject of etymology: in the century after Ménage, they had become more critical still, as we may see by the remarks of Turgot on the etymologies of Ménage himself.

The following are the remarks of Turgot, in the article 'Etymologie' (Encycl. Franc. in Turgot's collected works, vol. iii. p. 33): "Ménage est un exemple frappant des absurdités dans lesquelles on tombe, en adoptant sans choix ce que suggère la malheureuse facilité de supposer tout ce qui est possible: car il est très vrai qu'il ne fait aucune supposition dont la possibilité ne soit justifiée par des exemples. Mais nous avons prouvé qu'en multipliant à volonté les altérations intermédiaires, soit dans le son, soit dans la signification, il est aisé de dériver un mot quelconque de tout autre mot donné: c'est le moyen d'expliquer tout, et dès-lors de ne rien expliquer; c'est le moyen aussi de justifier tous les mépris de l'ignorance."

Steinhart (Einleitung zum Kratylus, pp. 551-552) agrees with Stallbaum to a certain extent, that Plato in the Kratylus intended to mock and caricature the bad etymologists of his own day; yet also that parts of the Kratylus are seriously intended. And he declares it almost impossible to draw a line between the serious matter and the caricature.

It appears to me that the Platonic critics here exculpate Plato from the charge of being a bad etymologist, only by fastening upon him another intellectual defect quite as serious.

Dittrich, in his Dissertation De Cratylo Platonis, Leipsic, 1841, adopts the opinion of Schleiermacher and the other critics, that the etymological examples given in this dialogue, though Sokrates announces them as proving and illustrating his own theory seriously laid down, are really bitter jests and mockery, intended to destroy it--"hanc sententiam facetissimis et irrisione plenis exemplis, dum comprobare videtur, reverâ infringit" (p. 12). Dittrich admits that Kratylus, who holds the theory derided, understands nothing of this acerbissima irrisio (p. 18). He thinks that Protagoras, not Prodikus nor Antisthenes, is the person principally caricatured (pp. 32-34-38).]

[Footnote 33: Schleiermacher, Introd. to Kratyl. pp. 8-16; Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Krat. p. 17. Winckelmann suspects that Hermogenes in the Kratylus is intended to represent Antisthenes (Antisth. Fragment. p. 49).

Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 866) says that the Pythagoreans were among the earliest etymologising philosophers, proposing such etymologies as now appear very absurd.]

[Side-note: Dissent from this theory--No proof that the Sophists ever proposed etymologies.]

To me this modern discovery or hypothesis appears inadmissible. It rests upon assumptions at best gratuitous, and in part incorrect: it introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. We find no proof that the Sophists ever proposed such etymologies as those which are here supposed to be ridiculed--or that they devoted themselves to etymology at all. If they etymologised, they would doubtless do so in the manner (to our judgment loose and fantastic) of their own time and of times long after them. But what ground have we for presuming that Plato's views on the subject were more correct? and that etymologies which to them appeared admissible, would be regarded by him as absurd and ridiculous?

Now if the persons concerned were other than the Sophists, scarcely any critic would have thought himself entitled to fasten upon them a discreditable imputation without some evidence. Of Prodikus we know (and that too chiefly from some sarcasms of Plato) that he took pains to distinguish words apparently, but not really, equivalent: and that such accurate distinction was what he meant by "rectitude of names" (Plato, Euthydêm. 277 E.) Of Protagoras we know that he taught, by precept or example, correct speaking or writing: but we have no information that either of them pursued etymological researches, successfully or unsuccessfully.[34] Moreover this very dialogue (Kratylus) contains strong presumptive evidence that the Platonic etymologies could never have been intended to ridicule Protagoras. For these etymologies are announced by Sokrates as exemplifying and illustrating a theory of his own respecting names: which theory (Sokrates himself expressly tells us) is founded upon the direct negation of the cardinal doctrine of Protagoras.[35] That Sophist, therefore, could not have been ridiculed by any applications, however extravagant, of a theory directly opposed to him.[36]

[Footnote 34: See a good passage of Winckelmann, Prolegg. ad Platon. Euthydemum, p. xlvii., respecting Protagoras and Prodikus, as writers and critics on language.

Stallbaum says, Proleg. ad Krat. p. 11:--"Quibus verbis haud dubié notantur Sophistæ; qui, neglectis linguæ elementis, derivatorum et compositorum verborum originationem temeré ad suum arbitrium tractabant". Ibid. p. 4:--"In Cratylo ineptæ etymologiæ specimina exhibentur, ita quidem ut haudquaquam dubitari liceat, quin ista omnia ad mentem sophistarum maximeque Protagoreorum joculari imitatione explicata sint".

In spite of these confident assertions,--first, that the Sophists are the persons intended to be ridiculed, next, that they deserved to be so ridiculed--Stallbaum has another passage, p. 15, wherein he says, "Jam vero quinam fuerint philosophi isti atque etymologi, qui in Cratylo ridentur et exploduntur, vulgo parum exploratum habetur". He goes on to say that neither Prodikus nor Antisthenes is meant, but Protagoras and the Protagoreans. To prove this he infers, from a passage in this dialogue (c. 11, p. 391 C), that Protagoras had written a book [Greek: peri\ o)rtho/têtos tô=n o)noma/tôn] (Heindorf and Schleiermacher, with better reason, infer from the passage nothing more than the circumstance that Protagoras taught [Greek: o)rthoepei/an] or correct speaking and writing). The passage does not prove this; but if it did, what did Protagoras teach in the book? Stallbaum tells us (p. 16):--"Jam si quæras, quid tandem Protagoras ipse de nominum ortu censuerit, fateor unâ conjecturâ nitendum esse, ut de hâc re aliquid eruatur". He then proceeds to conjecture, from the little which we know respecting Protagoras, what that Sophist must have laid down upon the origin of names; and he finishes by assuming the very point which he ought to have proved (p. 17):--"ex ipso Cratylo intelligimus et cognoscimus, mox inter Protagoræ amicos exstitisse qui inepté hæc studia persequentes, non e verbis et nominibus mentis humanæ notiones elicere et illustrare, sed in verba et nomina sua ipsi decreta transferre et sic ea probare et confirmare niterentur. Quid quidem homines à Platone hoc libro facetissimâ irrisione exagitantur," &c. I repeat, that in spite of Stallbaum's confident assertions, he fails in giving the smallest proof that Protagoras or the Sophists proposed etymologies such as to make them a suitable butt for Plato on this occasion. Ast also talks with equal confidence and equal absence of proof about the silly and arbitrary etymological proceedings of the Sophists, which (he says) this dialogue is intended throughout to ridicule (Ast, Platon's Leben und Schriften, pp. 253-254-264, &c.).]

[Footnote 35: Plato, Kratylus, c. 4-5, pp. 386-387.]

[Footnote 36: Lassalle (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 379-384) asserts and shows very truly that Protagoras cannot be the person intended to be represented by Plato under the name of Kratylus, or as holding the opinion of Kratylus about names. Lassalle affirms that Plato intends Kratylus in the dialogue to represent Herakleitus himself (p. 385); moreover he greatly extols the sagacity of Herakleitos for having laid down the principle, that "Names are the essence of things," in which principle Lassalle (so far as I understand him) himself concurs.

Assuming this to be the case, we should naturally suppose that if Plato intends to ridicule any one, by presenting caricatured etymologies as flowing from this principle, the person intended as butt must be Herakleitus himself. Not so Lassalle. He asserts as broadly as Stallbaum that it was Protagoras and the other Sophists who grossly abused the doctrine of Herakleitus, for the purpose of confusing and perverting truth by arbitrary etymologies. His language is even more monstrous and extravagant than that of Stallbaum; yet he does not produce (any more than Stallbaum) the least fragment of proof that the Sophists or Protagoras did what he imputes to them (pp. 400-401-403-422).

M. Lenormant, in his recent edition of the Kratylus (Comm. p. 7-9), maintains also that neither the Sophists nor the Rhetors pretended to etymologise, nor are here ridiculed. But he ascribes to Plato in the Kratylus a mystical and theological purpose which I find it difficult to follow.]

[Side-note: Plato did not intend to propose mock-etymologies, or to deride any one. Protagoras could not be ridiculed here. Neither Hermogenes nor Kratylus understand the etymologies as caricature.]

Suppose it then ascertained that Plato intended to ridicule and humiliate some rash etymologists, there would still be no propriety in singling out the Sophists as his victims--except that they are obnoxious names, against whom every unattested accusation is readily believed. But it is neither ascertained, nor (in my judgment) probable, that Plato here intended to ridicule or humiliate any one. The ridicule, if any was intended, would tell against himself more than against others. For he first begins by laying down a general theory respecting names: a theory unquestionably propounded as serious, and understood to be so by the critics:[37] moreover, involving some of his favourite and peculiar doctrines. It is this theory that his particular etymologies are announced as intended to carry out, in the way of illustration or exemplification. Moreover, he undertakes to prove this theory against Hermogenes, who declares himself strongly opposed to it: and he proves it by a string of arguments which (whether valid or not) are obviously given with a serious and sincere purpose of establishing the conclusion. Immediately after having established that there was a real rectitude of names, and after announcing that he would proceed to enquire wherein such rectitude consisted,[38] what sense or consistency would there be in his inventing a string of intentional caricatures announced as real etymologies? By doing this, he would be only discrediting and degrading the very theory which he had taken so much pains to inculcate upon Hermogenes. Instead of ridiculing Protagoras, he would ridicule himself and his own theory for the benefit of opponents generally, one among them being Protagoras: who (if we imagine his life prolonged) would have had the satisfaction of seeing a theory, framed in direct opposition to his doctrine, discredited and parodied by his own advocate. Hermogenes, too (himself an opponent of the theory, though not concurring with Protagoras), if these etymologies were intended as caricatures, ought to be made to receive them as such, and to join in the joke at the expense of the persons derided. But Hermogenes is not made to manifest any sense of their being so intended: he accepts them all as serious, though some as novel and surprising, in the same passive way which is usual with the interlocutors of Sokrates in other dialogues. Farther, there are some among these etymologies plain and plausible enough, accepted as serious by all the critics.[39] Yet these are presented in the series, without being parted off by any definite line, along with those which we are called upon to regard as deliberate specimens of mock-etymology. Again, there are also some, which, looking at their etymological character, are as strange and surprising as any in the whole dialogue: but which yet, from the place which they occupy in the argument, and from the plain language in which they are presented, almost exclude the supposition that they can be intended as jest or caricature.[40] Lastly, Kratylus, whose theory all these etymologies are supposed to be intended to caricature, is so far from being aware of this, that he cordially approves every thing which Sokrates had said.[41]

[Footnote 37: Schleiermacher, Introd. to Krat. pp. 7-10; Lassalle, Herakleit. ii. p. 387.]

[Footnote 38: Plato, Kratylus, p. 391 B.]

[Footnote 39: See, as an example, his derivation of [Greek: Di/philos] from [Greek: Dii+/ phi/los], p. 399: [Greek: Mou=sa], p. 406: [Greek: dai/môn] from [Greek: daê/môn], p. 398: for [Greek: A)phrodi/tê] he takes the Hesiodic etymology, p. 406. [Greek: A)/rês] and [Greek: a)/r)r(ên] (p. 407). His derivation of [Greek: ai)thê/r--a)po\ tou= a)ei\ the/ein] (p. 410) is given twice by Aristotle (De Coelo, i. 3, p. 270, b. 22; Meteorol. i. 3, p. 339, b. 25) as well as in the Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 392, a. 8. None of the Platonic etymologies is more strange than that of [Greek: psuchê/], quasi [Greek: phuse/chê, a)po\ tou= tê\n phu/sin o)chei=n kai\ e)/chein] (Kratyl. p. 400). Yet Proklus cites this as serious, Scholia in Kratylum, p. 4, ed. Boissonnade. Plato, in the Treatise De Legibus, derives [Greek: cho/ros] from [Greek: chara/] and [Greek: no/mos] from [Greek: nou=s] or [Greek: no/os] (ii. 1, p. 654 A, xii. 8, p. 957 D).]

[Footnote 40: See Plato, Kratyl. p. 437 A-B.

This occurs in the latter portion of the dialogue carried on by Sokrates with Kratylus, and is admitted by Lassalle to be seriously meant by Plato: though Lassalle maintains that the etymologies in the first part of the dialogue (between Sokrates and Hermogenes) are mere mockery and parody. (Lassalle, Herakleitos der Dunkle, vol. ii., pp. 402-403).

I venture to say that none of those Platonic etymologies, which Lassalle regards as caricatures, are more absurd than those which he here accepts as serious. Liddell and Scott in their Lexicon say about [Greek: thumo/s], "probably rightly derived from [Greek: thu/ô] by Plat. Crat. 419 E, [Greek: a)po\ tê=s thu/seôs kai\ ze/seôs tê=s psuchê=s.]" The manner in which Schleiermacher and Steinhart also (Einleit. zum Kratylos, pp. 552-554), analysing this dialogue, represent Plato as passing backwards and forwards from mockery to earnest and from earnest to mockery, appears to me very singular: as well as the principle which Schleiermacher lays down (Introduct. p. 10), that Plato intended the general doctrines to be seriously understood, and the particular etymological applications to be mere mockery and extravagance (um wer weiss welche Komödie aufzuführen). What other philosopher has ever propounded serious doctrines, and then followed them up by illustrations knowingly and intentionally caricatured so as to disparage the doctrines instead of recommending them?

It** is surely less difficult to believe that Plato conceived as plausible and admissible those etymologies which appear to us absurd.

As a specimen of the view entertained by able men of the seventeenth century respecting the Platonic and Aristotelian etymologies, see the Institutiones Logicæ of Burgersdicius, Lib. i. c. 25, not. 1. Lehrsch (Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, Part i. p. 34-35) agrees with the other commentators, that the Platonic etymologies in the Kratylus are caricatured to deride the boastful and arbitrary etymologies of the Sophists about language. But he too produces no evidence of such etymologies on the part of the Sophists; nay, what is remarkable, he supposes that both Protagoras and Prodikus agreed in the Platonic doctrine that names were [Greek: phu/sei] (see pp. 17-19).]

[Footnote 41: Plato, Kratylus, p. 429 C. Steinhart (Einleit. zum Krat. pp. 549-550) observes that both Kratylus and Hermogenes are represented as understanding seriously these etymologies which are now affirmed to be meant as caricatures.

As specimens of Plato's view respecting admissible etymologies, we find him in Timæus, p. 43 C, deriving [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] from [Greek: a)i+/ssô]: again in the same dialogue, p. 62 A, [Greek: thermo\s] from [Greek: kermati/zein]. In Legg. iv. 714, we have [Greek: tê\n tou= nou= dianomê\n e)ponoma/zontas no/mon]. In Phædrus, p. 238 C, we find [Greek: e)/rôs] derived from [Greek: e)r)r(ôme/nôs r(ôsthei=sa].

Aristotle derives [Greek: o)/sphus] from [Greek: i)sophue/s], Histor. Animal. i. 13, p. 493, a. 22: also [Greek: di/kaion] from [Greek: di/cha], Ethic. Nikom. v. 7, 1132, a. 31; [Greek: methu/ein--meta\ to\ thu/ein], Athenæus, ii. 40. The Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise [Greek: Peri\ Ko/smou] (p. 401, a. 15) adopts the Platonic etymology of [Greek: Di/a-Zê=na] as [Greek: di' o(\n zô=men]

Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, c. 9, p. 948, derives [Greek: kne/phas] from [Greek: keno\n pha/ous].

The Emperor Marcus Antoninus derives [Greek: a)kti/s], the ray of the Sun, [Greek: a)po\ tou= e)ktei/nesthai], Meditat. viii. 57.

The Stoics, who were fond of etymologising, borrowed many etymologies from the Platonic Kratylus (Villoison, de Theologiâ Physicâ Stoicorum, in Osann's edition of Cornutus De Naturâ Deorum, p. 512). Specimens of the Stoic etymologies are given by the Stoic Balbus in Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, ii. 25-29 (64-73).

Dähne (in his Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religions-Philosophie, i. p. 73 seq.) remarks on the numerous etymologies not merely propounded, but assumed as grounds of reasoning by Philo Judæus in commenting upon the Pentateuch, etymologies totally inadmissible and often ridiculous.]

[Side-note: Plato intended his theory as serious, but his exemplifications as admissible guesses. He does not cite particular cases as proofs of a theory, but only as illustrating what he means.]

I cannot therefore accept as well-founded this "discovery of modern times," which represents the Platonic etymologies in the Kratylus as intentionally extravagant and knowingly caricatured, for the purpose of ridiculing the Sophists or others. In my judgment, Plato did not put them forward as extravagant, nor for the purpose of ridiculing any one, but as genuine illustrations of a theory of his own respecting names. It cannot be said indeed that he advanced them as proof of his theory: for Plato seldom appeals to particulars, except when he has a theory to attack. When he has a theory to lay down, he does not generally recognise the necessity of either proving or verifying it by application to particular cases. His proof is usually deductive or derived from some more general principle asserted à priori--some internal sentiment enunciated as a self-justifying maxim. Particular examples serve to illustrate what the principle is, but are not required to establish its validity.[42] But I believe that he intended his particular etymologies as bonâ fide guesses, more or less probable (like the developments in the Timæus, which he[43] repeatedly designates as [Greek: ei)ko/ta], and nothing beyond): some certain, some doubtful, some merely novel and ingenious: such as would naturally spring from the originating afflatus of diviners (like Euthyphron, to whom he alludes more than once[44]) who stepped beyond the ordinary regions of human affirmation. Occasionally he proposes alternative and distinct etymologies: feeling assured that there was some way of making out the conclusion--but not feeling equally certain about his own way of making it out. The sentiment of belief attaches itself in Plato's mind to general views and theorems: when he gives particular consequences as flowing from them, his belief graduates down through all the stages between full certainty and the lowest probability, until in some cases it becomes little more than a fanciful illustration--like the mythes which he so often invents to expand and enliven these same general views.[45]

[Footnote 42: See some passages in this very dialogue, Krat. pp. 436 E, 437 C, 438 C.

Lassalle remarks that neither Herakleitus nor Plato were disposed to rest the proof of a general principle upon an induction of particulars (Herakleitos, p. 406).]

[Footnote 43: Spengel justly remarks (Art. Scr. p. 52) respecting the hypotheses of the Platonic commentators:--"Platonem quidem liberare gestiunt, falsâ, ironiâ, non ex animi sententiâ omnia in Cratylo prolata esse dicentes. Sed præter alia multa et hoc neglexerunt viri docti, easdem verborum originationes, quas in Cratylo, in cæteris quoque dialogis, ubi nullus est facetiis locus, et seria omnia aguntur, recurrere."

This passage is cited by K. F. Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. d. Platon. Phil. Not. 474, p. 656. Hermann's own remarks on the dialogue (pp. 494-497) are very indistinct, but he seems to agree with Schleiermacher in singling out Antisthenes as the object of attack.

The third portion of Lehrsch's work, Ueber die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, cites numerous examples of the etymologies attempted by the ancients, from Homer downwards, many of them collected from the Etymologicon Magnum. When we read the etymologies propounded seriously by Greek and Latin philosophers (especially the Stoic Chrysippus), literary men, jurists, and poets, we shall not be astonished at those found in the Platonic Kratylus. The etymology of [Greek: Theo\s a)po\ tou= thei=n], given in the Kratylus (p. 397 D), as well as in the Pythagorean Philolaus (see Boeckh, Philolaus, pp. 168-175), and repeated by Clemens Alexandrinus, is not more absurd than that of [Greek: theo\s a)po\ tou= thei=nai], given by Herodot. ii. 52, and also repeated by Clemens, see Wesseling's note. None of the etymologies of the Kratylus is more strange than that of [Greek: Zeu\s-Di/a-Zê=na] (p. 396 B). Yet this is reproduced in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise, [Greek: Peri\ Ko/smou] (p. 401, a. 15), as well as by the Stoic Zeno (Diogen. Laert. vii. 147). The treatise of Cornutus, De Nat. Deor. with Osann's Commentary, is instructive in enabling us to appreciate the taste of ancient times as to what was probable or admissible in etymology. There are few of the etymologies in the Kratylus more singular than that of [Greek: a)/nthrôpos] from [Greek: a)nathrô=n a)\ o(/pôpen]. Yet this is cited by Ammonius as a perfectly good derivation, ad Aristot. De Interpret. p. 103, b. 8, Schol. Bekk., and also in the Etymologicon Magnum.]

[Footnote 44: Compare Plato, Euthyphron, p. 6 D. Origination and invention often pass in Plato as the workings of an ordinary mind (sometimes even a feeble mind) worked upon from without by divine inspiration, quite distinct from the internal force, reasoning, judging, testing, which belongs to a powerful mind. See Phædrus, pp. 235 C, 238 D, 244 A; Timæus, p. 72 A; Menon, p. 81 A.]

[Footnote 45: I have made some remarks to this effect upon the Platonic mythes in my notice of the Phædon, see ch. xxv. p. 415, ad Phædon, p. 114.]

[Side-note: Sokrates announces himself as Searcher. Other etymologists of ancient times admitted etymologies as rash as those of Plato.]

We must remember that Sokrates in the Kratylus explicitly announces himself as having no formed opinion on the subject, and as competent only to the prosecution of the enquiry, jointly with the others. What he says must therefore be received as conjectures proposed for discussion. I see no ground for believing that he regarded any of them, even those which appear to us the strangest, as being absurd or extravagant--or that he proposed any of them in mockery and caricature, for the purpose of deriding other Etymologists. Because these etymologies, or many of them at least, appear to us obviously absurd, we are not warranted in believing that they must have appeared so to Plato. They did not appear so (as I have already observed) to Dionysius of Halikarnassus--nor to Diogenes, nor to the Platonists of antiquity nor to any critics earlier than the seventeenth century.[46] By many of these critics they were deemed not merely serious, but valuable. Nor are they more absurd than many of the etymologies proposed by Aristotle, by the Stoics, by the Alexandrine critics, by Varro, and by the grammatici or literary men of antiquity generally; moreover, even by Plato himself in other dialogues occasionally.[47] In determining what etymologies would appear to Plato reasonable or admissible, Dionysius, Plutarch, Proklus, and Alkinous, are more likely to judge rightly than we: partly because they had a larger knowledge of the etymologies proposed by Greek philosophers and grammatici than we possess--partly because they had no acquaintance with the enlarged views of modern etymologists--which, on the point here in question, are misleading rather than otherwise. Plato held the general theory that names, in so far as they were framed with perfect rectitude, held embodied in words and syllables a likeness or imitation of the essence of things. And if he tried to follow out such a theory into detail, without any knowledge of grammatical systems, without any large and well-chosen collection of analogies within his own language, or any comparison of different languages with each other--he could scarcely fail to lose himself in wonderful and violent transmutations of letters and syllables.[48]

[Footnote 46: Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verbor. c. 16, p. 96, Reiske; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 60, p. 375.

Proklus advises that those who wish to become dialecticians should begin with the study of the Kratylus (Schol. ad Kratyl. p. 3, ed. Boiss.).

We read in the Phædrus of Plato (p. 244 B) in the second speech ascribed to Sokrates, two etymologies:--1. [Greek: mantikê\] derived from [Greek: manikê\] by the insertion of [Greek: t], which Sokrates declares to be done in bad taste, [Greek: oi( de\ nu=n a)peiroka/lôs to\ tau= e)pemba/llontes mantikê\n e)ka/lasan.] 2. [Greek: oi)ônistikê\], quasi [Greek: oi)onoi+stikê\], from [Greek: oi)/êsis, nou=s, i(stori/a]. Compare the etymology of [Greek: E)/rôs], p. 238 C. That these are real word-changes, which Plato believes to have taken place, is the natural and reasonable interpretation of the passage. Cicero (Divinat. i. 1) alludes to the first of the two as Plato's real opinion; and Heindorf as well as Schleiermacher accept it in the same sense, while expressing their surprise at the want of etymological perspicacity in Plato. Ast and Stallbaum, on the contrary, declare that these two etymologies are mere irony and mockery, spoken by Plato, ex mente Sophistarum, and intended as a sneer at the perverse and silly Sophists. No reason is produced by Ast and Stallbaum to justify this hypothesis, except that you cannot imagine "Platonem tam cæcum fuisse," &c. To me this reason is utterly insufficient; and I contend, moreover, that sneers at the Sophists would be quite out of place in a speech, such as the palinode of Sokrates about Eros.]

[Footnote 47: See what Aristotle says about [Greek: Pa/ntê] in the first chapter of the treatise De Coelo; also about [Greek: au)to/maton] from [Greek: au)to\ ma/tên], Physic. ii. 5, p. 197, b. 30.

Stallbaum, after having complimented Plato for his talent in caricaturing the etymologies of others, expresses his surprise to find Aristotle reproducing some of these very caricatures as serious, see Stallbaum's note on Kratyl. p. 411 E.

Respecting the etymologies proposed by learned and able Romans in and before the Ciceronian and Augustan age, Ælius Stilo, Varro, Labeo, Nigidius, &c., see Aulus Gellius, xiii. 10; Quintilian, Inst. Or. i. 5; Varro, de Linguâ Latinâ.

Even to Quintilian, the etymologies of Varro appeared preposterous; and he observes, in reference to those proposed by Ælius Stilo and by others afterwards, "Cui non post Varronem sit venia?" (i. 6, 37). This critical remark, alike good tempered and reasonable, might be applied with still greater pertinence to the Kratylus of Plato. In regard to etymology, more might have been expected from Varro than from Plato; for in the days of Plato, etymological guesses were almost a novelty; while during the three centuries which elapsed between him and Varro, many such conjectures had been hazarded by various scholars, and more or less of improvement might be hoped from the conflict of opposite opinions and thinkers.

M. Gaston Boissier (in his interesting Étude sur la vie et les Ouvrages de M. Terentius Varron, p. 152, Paris, 1861) observes respecting Varro, what is still more applicable to Plato:--"Gardons nous bien d'ailleurs de demander à Varron ce qu'exige la science moderne: pour n'être pas trop sévères, remettons-le dans son époque et jugeons-le avec l'esprit de son temps.** Il ne semble pas qu'alors on réclamât, de ceux qui recherchaient les étymologies, beaucoup d'exactitude et de sévérité. On se piquait moins d'arriver à l'origine réelle du mot, que de le décomposer d'une manière ingénieuse et qui en gravât le sens dans la mémoire. Les jurisconsultes eux-mêmes, malgré la gravité de leur profession et l'importance pratique de leurs recherches, ne suivaient pas une autre méthode. Trebatius trouvait dans sacellum les deux mots sacra cella: et Labéon faisait venir soror de seorsum, parce que la jeune fille se sépare de le maison paternelle pours suivre son époux: tout comme Nigidius trouvoit dans frater ferè alter--c'est à dire, un autre soi-même," &c.

Lobeck has similar remarks in his Aglaophamus (pp. 867-869):--"Sané ita J. Capellus veteres juris consultos excusat, mutuum interpretantes quod ex meo tuum fiat, testamentum autem testationem mentis, non quod eam verborum originem esse putarent, sed ut significationem eorum altius in legentium animis defigerent. Similiterque ecclesiastici quidam auctores, quum nomen Pascha a græco verbo [Greek: pa/schein] repetunt, non per ignorantiam lapsi, sed allusionis quandam gratiam aucupati videntur."]

[Footnote 48: Gräfenhahn (Gesch. d. classichen Philologie, vol. i. sect. 36, pp. 151-164) points out how common was the hypothesis of fanciful derivation of names or supposed etymologies among the Greek poets, and how it passed from them to the prose writers. He declares that the etymologies in Plato not only in the Kratylus but in other dialogues are "etymologische monstra," but he professes inability to distinguish which of them are serious (pp. 163-164).

Lobeck remarks that the playing and quibbling with words, widely diffused among the ancient literati generally, was especially likely to belong to those who held the Platonic theory about language:--"Is intelligat necesse est, hoc universum genus ab antiquitatis** ingenio non alienum, ei vero, qui imagines rerum in vocabulis sic ut in cerâ expressas putaret, convenientissimum fuisse" (Aglaophamus, p. 870).]

[Side-note: Continuance of the dialogue--Sokrates endeavours to explain how it is that the Names originally right have become so disguised and spoiled.]

Having expressed my opinion that the etymologies propounded by Sokrates in the Kratylus are not intended as caricatures, but as bonâ fide specimens of admissible etymological conjecture, or, at the least, of discoverable analogy--I resume the thread of the dialogue.

These etymologies are the hypothetical links whereby Sokrates reconciles his first theory of the essential rectitude of Names (that is, of Naming, as a process which can only be performed in one way, and by an Artist who discerns and uses the Name-Form), with the names actually received and current. The contrast between the sameness and perfection postulated in the theory, and the confusion of actual practice, is not less manifest than the contrast between the benevolent purposes ascribed to the Demiurgus (in the Timæus) and the realities of man and society:--requiring intermediate assumptions, more or less ingenious, to explain or attenuate the glaring inconsistencies. Respecting the Name-Form, Sokrates intimates that it may often be so disguised by difference of letters and syllables, as not to be discernible by an ordinary man, or by any one except an artist or philosopher. Two names, if compound, may have the same Name-Form, though few or none of the letters in them be the same. A physician may so disguise his complex mixtures, by apparent differences of colour or smell, that they shall be supposed by others to be different, though essentially the same. Beta is the name of the letter B: you may substitute, in place of the three last letters, any others which you prefer, and the name will still be appropriate to designate the letter B.[49]

[Footnote 49: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393-394.]

[Side-note: Letters, as well as things, must be distinguished with their essential properties, each must be adapted to each.]

To explain the foundations of the onomastic (name-giving or speaking) art,[50] we must analyse words into their primordial constituent letters. The name-giving Artists have begun from this point, and we must follow in their synthetical track. We must distinguish letters with their essential forms--we must also distinguish things with their essential forms--we must then assign to each essence of things that essence of letters which has a natural aptitude to signify it, either one letter singly or several conjoined. The rectitude of the compound names will depend upon that of the simple and primordial.[51] This is the only way in which we can track out the rectitude of names: for it is no account of the matter to say that the Gods bestowed them, and that therefore they are right: such recourse to a Deus ex machinâ is only one among the pretexts for evading the necessity of explanation.[52]

[Footnote 50: Plato, Kratyl. p. 425 A. [Greek: tê=| o)nomastikê=|, ê)\ r(êtorikê=|, ê)\ ê(/tis e)sti\n ê( te/chnê.]]

[Footnote 51: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 424 B-E, 426 A, 434 A.]

[Footnote 52: Plato, Kratyl. p. 425 E.]

This extreme postulate of analysis and adaptation may be compared with that which Sokrates lays down, in the Phædrus, in regard to the art of Rhetoric. You must first distinguish all the different forms of mind--then all the different forms of speech; you must assign the sort of speech which is apt for persuading each particular sort of mind. Phædrus, pp. 271-272.]

[Side-note: Essential significant aptitude consists in resemblance.]

Essential aptitude for signification consists in resemblance between the essence of the letter and that of the thing signified. Thus the letter Rho, according to Sokrates, is naturally apt for the signification of rush or vehement motion, because in pronouncing it the tongue is briskly agitated and rolled about. Several words are cited, illustrating this position.[53] Iota naturally designates thin and subtle things, which insinuate themselves everywhere. Phi, Chi, Psi, Sigma, the sibilants, imitate blowing. Delta and Tau, from the compression of the tongue, imitate stoppage of motion, or stationary condition. Lambda imitates smooth and slippery things. Nu serves, as confining the voice in the mouth, to form the words signifying in-doors and interior. Alpha and Eta are both of them large letters: the first is assigned to signify size, the last to signify length. Omicron is suited to what is round or circular.[54]

[Footnote 53: Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 D-E. [Greek: krou/ein, thrau/ein, e(rei/kein], &c. Leibnitz (Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, Book iii. ch. 2, p. 300 Erdm.); and Jacob Grimm (in his Dissertation Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1858, ed. 4) give views very similar to those of Plato, respecting the primordial growth of language, and the original significant or symbolising power supposed to be inherent in each letter (Kein Buchstabe, "ursprünglich steht bedeutungslos oder ueberflüssig," pp. 39-40). Leibnitz and Grimm say (as Plato here also affirms) that Rho designates the Rough--Lambda, the Smooth: see also what he says about Alpha, Iota, Hypsilon. Compare, besides, M. Renan, Orig. du Langage, vi. p. 137.

The comparison of the Platonic speculations on the primordial powers of letters, with those of a modern linguistic scholar so illustrious as Grimm (the earliest speculations with the latest) are exceedingly curious--and honourable to Plato. They serve as farther reasons for believing that this dialogue was not intended to caricature Protagoras.]

[Footnote 54: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 426-427.]

It is from these fundamental aptitudes, and some others analogous, that the name-giving Artist, or Lawgiver, first put together letters to compound and construct his names. Herein consists their rectitude, according to Sokrates. Though in laying down the position Sokrates gives it only as the best which he could discover, and intimates that some persons may turn it into derision--yet he evidently means to be understood seriously.[55]

[Footnote 55: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 426 B, 427 D.]

[Side-note: Sokrates assumes that the Name-giving Lawgiver was a believer in the Herakleitean theory.]

In applying this theory--about the fundamental significant aptitudes of the letters of the alphabet--to show the rectitude of the existing words compounded from them--Sokrates assumes that the name-giving Artists were believers in the Herakleitean theory: that is, in the perpetual process of flux, movement, and transition into contraries. He cites a large variety of names, showing by their composition that they were adapted to denote this all-pervading fact, as constituting the essence of things.[56] The names given by these theorists to that which is good, virtuous, agreeable, &c., were compounded in such a manner as to denote what facilitates, or falls in with, the law of universal movement: the names of things bad or hurtful, denote what obstructs or retards movement.[57]

[Footnote 56: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 401 C--402 B. 436 E: [Greek: ô(s tou= panto\s i)o/ntos te kai\ pherome/non kai\ r(e/ontos phame\n sêmai/nein ê(mi=n tê\n ou)si/an ta\ o)no/mata.] Also p. 439 B.]

[Footnote 57: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 415-416-417, &c.]

[Side-note: But the Name-Giver may be mistaken or incompetent--the rectitude of the name depends upon his knowledge.]

Many names (pursues Sokrates), having been given by artistic lawgivers who believed in the Herakleitean theory, will possess intrinsic rectitude, if we assume that theory to be true. But how if the theory be not true? and if the name-givers were mistaken on this fundamental point? The names will then not be right. Now we must not assume the theory to be true, although the Name-givers believed it to be so. Perhaps they themselves (Sokrates intimates) having become giddy by often turning round to survey the nature of things, mistook this vertige of their own for a perpetual revolution and movement of the things which they saw, and gave names accordingly.[58] A Name-Giver who is real and artistic is rare and hard to find: there are more among them incompetent than competent: and the name originally bestowed represents only the opinion or conviction of him by whom it is bestowed.[59] Yet the names bestowed will be consistent with themselves, founded on the same theory.

[Footnote 58: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 409**-411 C. [Greek: Ai)tiô=ntai dê\ ou) to\ e)/ndon to\ para\ sphi/si pa/thos ai)/tion ei)=nai tau/tês tê=s do/xês, a)ll' au)ta\ ta\ pra/gmata ou(/tô pephuke/nai], &c.

"He that is giddy thinks the world turns round," &c.]

[Footnote 59: Plato, Kratyl. p. 418 C. [Greek: Oi)=stha ou)=n o(/ti mo/non tou=to dêloi= to\ a)rchai=on o)/noma tê\n dia/noian tou= theme/nou?] Also p. 419 A.]

[Side-note: Changes and transpositions introduced in the name--hard to follow.]

Again, the names originally bestowed differ much from those in use now. Many of them have undergone serious changes: there have been numerous omissions, additions, interpolations, and transpositions of letters, from regard to euphony or other fancies: insomuch that the primitive root becomes hardly traceable, except by great penetration and sagacity.[60] Then there are some names which have never been issued at all from the mint of the name-giver, but have either been borrowed from foreigners, or perhaps have been suggested by super-human powers.[61]

[Footnote 60: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 394 B, 399 B, 414 C, 418 A.]

[Footnote 61: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397 B, 409 B.]

* * * * *

[Side-note: Sokrates qualifies and attenuates his original thesis.]

To this point Sokrates brings the question during his conversation with Hermogenes: against whom he maintains--That there is a natural intrinsic rectitude in Names, or a true Name-Form--that naming is a process which must be performed in the natural way, and by an Artist who knows that way. But when, after laying down this general theory, he has gone a certain length in applying it to actual names, he proceeds to introduce qualifications which attenuate and explain it away. Existing names were bestowed by artistic law-givers, but under a belief in the Herakleitean theory--which theory is at best doubtful: moreover the original names have, in course of time, undergone such multiplied changes, that the original point of significant resemblance can hardly be now recognised except by very penetrating intellects.

[Side-note: Conversation of Sokrates with Kratylus: who upholds that original thesis without any qualification.]

It is here that Sokrates comes into conversation with Kratylus: who appears as the unreserved advocate of the same general theory which Sokrates had enforced upon Hermogenes. He admits all the consequences of the theory, taking no account of qualifications. Moreover he announces himself as having already bestowed reflection on the subject, and as espousing the doctrine of Herakleitus.[62]

[Footnote 62: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 428 B, 440 E.

It appears that on this point the opinion of Herakleitus coincided with that of the Pythagoreans, who held that names were [Greek: phu/sei kai\ ou) the/sei] and maintained as a corollary that there could be only one name for each thing and only one thing signified by each name (Simplikius ad Aristot. Categ. p. 43, b. 32, Schol. Bekk.).

In general Herakleitus differed from Pythagoras, and is described as speaking of him with bitter antipathy.]

If names are significant by natural rectitude, or by partaking of the Name-Form, it follows that all names must be right or true, one as well as another. If a name be not right, it cannot be significant: that is, it is no name at all: it is a mere unmeaning sound. A name, in order to be significant, must imitate the essence of the thing named. If you add any thing to a number, or subtract any thing from it, it becomes thereby a new number: it is not the same number badly rendered. So with a letter: so too with a name. There is no such thing as a bad name. Every name must be either significant, and therefore, right--or else it is not a name. So also there is no such thing as a false proposition: you cannot say the thing that is not: your words in that case have no meaning; they are only an empty sound. The hypothesis that the law-giver may have distributed names erroneously is therefore not admissible.[63] Moreover, you see that he must have known well, for otherwise he would not have given names so consistent with each other, and with the general Herakleitean theory.[64] And since the name is by necessity a representation or copy of the thing, whoever knows the name, must also know the thing named. There is in fact no other way of knowing or seeking or finding out things, except through their names.[65]

[Footnote 63: Plato, Kratyl. p. 429 B-C.

Sokr. [Greek: Pa/nta a)/ra ta\ o)no/mata o)rthôs kei=tai?]

Krat. [Greek: O(/sa ge o)no/mata e)/sti.]

Sokr. [Greek: Ti/ ou)=n? E(rmoge/nei tô=|de po/teron mêde\ o)/noma tou=to kei=sthai phô=men, ei) mê/ ti au)tô=| E(rmou= gene/seôs prosê/kei, ê)\ kei=sthai me/n, ou) me/ntoi o)rthô=s ge?]

Krat. [Greek: Ou)de\ kei=sthai e)/moige dokei=, a)lla\ dokei=n kei=sthai. ei)=nai de\ e(te/rou tou=to tou)/noma, ou(=per kai\ ê( phu/sis ê( to\ o)/noma dêlou=sa.]

The critics say that these last words ought to be read [Greek: ê)\n to\ o)/noma dêloi=], as Ficinus has translated, and Schleiermacher after him. They are probably in the right; at the same time, reasoning upon the theory of Kratylus, we say without impropriety, that "the thing indicates the name".

That which is erroneously called a bad name is no name at all (so Kratylus argues), but only seems to be a name to ignorant persons. Thus also in the Platonic Minos (c. 9, p. 317): a bad law is no law in reality, but only seems to be a law to ignorant men, see above, ch. xiv. p. 88.**

Compare the like argument about [Greek: no/mos] in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 42-47, and Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. p. 392.]

[Footnote 64: Plato, Krat. p. 436 C. [Greek: A)lla\ mê ou)ch ou(/tôs e)/chê|, a)ll' a)nagkai=on ê)=|, ei)do/ta ti/thesthai to\n tithe/menon ta\ o)no/mata; ei) de\ mê/, o(/per pa/lai e)gô\ e)/legon, ou)d' a)\n o)no/mata ei)/ê. Me/giston de/ soi e)/stô tekmê/rion o(/ti ou)k e)/sphaltai tê=s a)lêthei/as o( tithe/menos; ou) ga\r a)\n pote ou(/tô xu/mphôna ê)=n au)tô=| a(/panta. ê)\ ou)k e)neno/eis au)to\s le/gôn ô(s pa/nta kat' au)to\ kai\ e)pi\ tau)to\n e)gi/gneto ta\ o)no/mata?]

These last words allude to the various particular etymologies which had been enumerated by Sokrates as illustrations of the Herakleitean theory. They confirm the opinion above expressed, that Plato intended his etymologies seriously, not as mockery or caricature. That Plato should have intended them as caricatures of Protagoras and Prodikus, and yet that he should introduce Kratylus as welcoming them in support of his argument, is a much greater absurdity than the supposition that Plato mistook them for admissible guesses.]

[Footnote 65: Plato, Krat. c. 111, pp. 435-436.]

[Side-note: Sokrates goes still farther towards retracting it,]

These consequences are fairly deduced by Kratylus from the hypothesis, of the natural rectitude of names, as laid down in the beginning of the dialogue, by Sokrates: who had expressly affirmed (in his anti-Protagorean opening of the dialogue) that unless the process of naming was performed according to the peremptory dictates of nature and by one of the few privileged name-givers, it would be a failure and would accomplish nothing;[66] in other words, that a non-natural name would be no name at all. Accordingly, in replying to Kratylus, Sokrates goes yet farther in retracting his own previous reasoning at the beginning of the dialogue--though still without openly professing to do so. He proposes a compromise.[67] He withdraws the pretensions of his theory, as peremptory or exclusive; he acknowledges the theory of Hermogenes as true, and valid in conjunction with it. He admits that non-natural names also, significant only by convention, are available as a make-shift--and that such names are in frequent use. Still however he contends, that natural names, significant by likeness, are the best, so far as they can be obtained: but inasmuch as that principle will not afford sufficiently extensive holding-ground, recourse must be had by way of supplement to the less perfect rectitude (of names) presented by customary or conventional significance.[68]

[Footnote 66: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. [Greek: e)a\n de\ mê/, e)xamartê/setai/ te kai\ ou)de\n poiê/sei.] Compare p. 389 A.]

[Footnote 67: Plato, Kratyl. p. 430 A. [Greek: phe/re dê/, e)a/n pê| diallachthô=men, ô= Kra/tule], &c.]

[Footnote 68: Plato, Krat. p. 435 C. [Greek: e)moi\ me\n ou)=n kai\ au)tô=| a)re/skei me\n kata\ to\ dunato\n o(/moia ei)=nai ta\ o)no/mata toi=s pra/gmasin; a)lla\ mê\ ô(s a)lêthô=s glischra\ ê)=| ê( o)lkê\ au)tê\ tê=s o(moio/têtos, a)nagkai=on de\ ê)=| kai\ tô=| phortikô=| tou/tô| proschrê=sthai, tê=| xunthê/kê|, ei)s o)noma/tôn o)rtho/têta; e)pei\ i)/sôs kata/ ge to\ dunato\n ka/llist' a)\n le/goito, o(/tan ê)\ pa=sin ê)\ ô(s plei/stois o(moi/ois le/gêtai, tou=to d' e)sti\ prosêkousin, ai)/schista de\ tou)nanti/on.]]

[Side-note: There are names better--more like, or less like to the things named: Natural Names are the best, but they cannot always be had. Names may be significant by habit, though in an inferior way.]

You say (reasons Sokrates with Kratylus) that names must be significant by way of likeness. But there are degrees of likeness. A portrait is more or less like its original, but it is never exactly like: it is never a duplicate, nor does it need to be so. Or a portrait, which really belongs to and resembles one person, may be erroneously assigned to another. The same thing happens with names. There are names more or less like the thing named--good or bad: there are names good with reference to their own object, but erroneously fitted on to objects not their own. The name does not cease to be a name, so long as the type or form of the thing named is preserved in it: but it is worse or better, according as the accompanying features are more or less in harmony with the form.[69] If names are like things, the letters which are put together to form names, must have a natural resemblance to things--as we remarked above respecting the letters Rho, Lambda, &c. But the natural, inherent, powers of resemblance and significance, which we pronounced to belong to these letters, are not found to pervade all the actual names, in which they are employed. There are words containing the letters Rho and Lambda, in a sense opposite to that which is natural to them--yet nevertheless at the same time significant; as is evident from the fact, that you and I and others understand them alike. Here then are words significant, without resembling: significant altogether through habit and convention. We must admit the principle of convention as an inferior ground and manner of significance. Resemblance, though the best ground as far as it can be had, is not the only one.[70]

[Footnote 69: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 432-434.]

[Footnote 70: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 434-435.]

[Side-note: All names are not consistent with the theory of Herakleitus: some are opposed to it.]

All names are not like the things named: some names are bad, others good: the law-giver sometimes gave names under an erroneous belief. Hence you are not warranted in saying that things must be known and investigated through names, and that whoever knows the name, knows also the thing named. You say that the names given are all coherent and grounded upon the Herakleitean theory of perpetual flux. You take this as a proof that that theory is true in itself, and that the law-giver adopted and proceeded upon it as true. I agree with you that the law-giver or name-giver believed in the Herakleitean theory, and adapted many of his names to it: but you cannot infer from hence that the theory is true--for he may have been mistaken.[71] Moreover, though many of the existing names consist with, and are based upon, that theory, the same cannot be said of all names. Many names can be enumerated which are based on the opposite principle of permanence and stand-still. It is unsafe to strike a balance of mere numbers between the two: besides which, even among the various names founded on the Herakleitean theory, you will find jumbled together the names of virtues and vices, benefits and misfortunes. That theory lends itself to good and evil alike; it cannot therefore be received as true--whether the name-giver believed in it or not.[72]

[Footnote 71: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 B-C. [Greek: E)/ti toi/nun to/de skepsômetha, o(/pôs mê\ ê(ma=s ta\ polla\ tau=ta o)no/mata e)s tauto\n tei/nonta e)xapata=|, kai\ tô=| o)/nti me\n oi( the/menoi au(ta\ dianoêthe/ntes te e)/thento ô(s i)o/ntôn a)pa/ntôn a)ei\ kai\ r(eo/ntôn--phai/nontai ga\r e)/moige kai\ au)toi\ ou)/tô dianoêthê=nai--to\ d', ei) e)/tuchen, ou)ch ou)/tôs e)/chei], &c.

These words appear to me to imply that Sokrates is perfectly serious, and not ironical, in delivering his opinion, that the original imposers of names were believers in the Herakleitean theory.]

[Footnote 72: Plato, Krat. pp. 437-438 C.

Sokrates here enumerates the particular names illustrating his judgment. However strange the verbal transitions and approximations may appear to us, I think it clear that he intends to be understood seriously.]

[Side-note: It is not true to say, That Things can only be known through their names.]

Lastly, even if we granted that things may be known and studied through their names, it is certain that there must be some other way of knowing them; since the first name-givers (as you yourself affirm) knew things, at a time when no names existed.[73] Things may be known and ought to be studied, not through names, but by themselves and through their own affinities.[74]

[Footnote 73: Plato, Krat. p. 438 A-B. Kratylus here suggests that the first names may perhaps have been imposed by a super-human power. But Sokrates replies, that upon that supposition all the names must have been imposed upon the same theory: there could not have been any contradiction between one name and another.]

[Footnote 74: Plato, Krat. pp. 438-439. 438 E:--[Greek: di' a)llê/lôn ge, ei)/ pê| xuggenê= e)sti/, kai\ au)ta\ di' au(tô=n.]]

[Side-note: Unchangeable Platonic Forms--opposed to the Herakleitean flux, which is true only respecting sensible particulars.]

Sokrates then concludes the dialogue by opposing the Platonic ideas to the Herakleitean theory. I often dream or imagine the Beautiful per se, the Good per se, and such like existences or Entia.[75] Are not such existences real? Are they not eternal, unchangeable and stationary? Particular beautiful things--particular good things--are in perpetual change or flux: but The Beautiful, The Good--The Ideas or Forms of these and such like--remain always what they are, always the same.

[Footnote 75: Plato, Krat. p. 439 C-D. [Greek: ske/psai o( e)/gôge polla/kis o)neirô/ttô, po/teron phô=me/n ti ei)=nai au)to\ kalo\n kai\ a)gatho\n kai\ e(\n e(/kaston tô=n o)/ntôn ou(/tôs, ê)\ mê/? . . .

mê\ ei) pro/sôpo/n ti/ e)sti kalo\n ê)/ ti tô=n toiou=tôn, kai\ dokei= tau=ta pa/nta r(ei=n; a)ll' au)to\ to\ kalo\n ou) toiou=ton a)ei/ e)stin oi(=o/n e)stin?]]

The Herakleitean theory of constant and universal flux is true respecting particular things, but not true respecting these Ideas or Forms. It is the latter alone which know or are known: it is they alone which admit of being rightly named. For that which is in perpetual flux and change can neither know, nor be known, nor be rightly named.[76] Being an ever-changing subject, it is never in any determinate condition: and nothing can be known which is not in a determinate condition. The Form of the knowing subject, as well as the Form of the known object, must both remain fixed and eternal, otherwise there can be no knowledge at all.

[Footnote 76: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D--440 A. [Greek: A)=r' ou)=n oi(=o/n te proseipei=n au)to\ o)rthôs, ei) a)ei\ u(pexe/rchetai, prô=ton me\n o(/ti, e)keino/ e)stin, e)/peita o(/ti toiou=tôn? ê)\ a)na/gkê a)/ma ê(mô=n lego/ntôn a)/llo au)to\ eu)thu\s gi/gnesthai kai\ u(pexie/nai, kai\ mêke/ti ou(/tôs e)/chein? . . .

A)lla\ mê\n ou)d' a)\n gnôsthei/ê ge u(p' ou)deno/s. . . .

A)ll' ou)de\ gnôsin ei)=nai pha/nai ei)ko/s, ei) metapi/ptei pa/nta chrê/mata kai\ mêde\n me/nei.]]

[Side-note: Herakleitean theory must not be assumed as certain. We must not put implicit faith in names.]

To admit these permanent and unchangeable Forms is to deny the Herakleitean theory, which proclaims constant and universal flux. This is a debate still open and not easy to decide. But while it is yet undecided, no wise man ought to put such implicit faith in names and in the bestowers of names, as to feel himself warranted in asserting confidently the certainty of the Herakleitean theory.[77] Perhaps that theory is true, perhaps not. Consider the point strenuously, Kratylus. Be not too easy in acquiescence--for you are still young, and have time enough before you. If you find it out, give to me also the benefit of your solution.[78]

[Footnote 77: Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. [Greek: Tau=t' ou)=n po/tero/n pote ou(/tôs e)/chei, ê)\ e)kei/nôs ô(s oi( peri\ Ê(ra/kleito/n te le/gousi kai\ a)/lloi polloi/, mê\ ou) r(a=|dion ê)=| e)piske/psasthai, ou)de\ pa/nu nou=n e)/chontos a)nthrô/pou e)pitre/psanta o)no/masin au(to\n kai\ tê\ au(tou= psuchê\n therapeu/ein, pepisteuko/ta e)kei/nois kai\ toi=s theme/nois au)ta/, dii+schuri/zesthai ô(s ti ei)do/ta, kai\ au)tou= te kai\ tô=n o)/ntôn katagignô/skein, ô(s ou)de\n u(gie\s ou)deno/s, a(lla\ pa/nta ô/sper kera/mia r(ei=], &c.]

[Footnote 78: Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 D.]

Kratylus replies that he will follow the advice given, but that he has already meditated on the matter, and still adheres to Herakleitus. Such is the close of the dialogue.

* * * * *

[Side-note: Remarks upon the dialogue. Dissent from the opinion of Stallbaum and others, that it is intended to deride Protagoras and other Sophists.]

One of the most learned among the modern Platonic commentators informs us that the purpose of Plato in this dialogue was, "to rub over Protagoras and other Sophists with the bitterest salt of sarcasm".[79] I have already expressed my dissent from this theory, which is opposed to all the ancient views of the dialogue, and which has arisen, in my judgment, only from the anxiety of the moderns to exonerate Plato from the reproach of having suggested as admissible, etymologies which now appear to us fantastic. I see no derision of the Sophists, except one or two sneers against Protagoras and Prodikus, upon the ever-recurring theme that they took money for their lectures.[80] The argument against Protagoras at the opening of the dialogue--whether conclusive or not--is serious and not derisory. The discourse of Sokrates is neither that of an anti-sophistical caricaturist, on the one hand--nor that of a confirmed dogmatist who has studied the subject and made up his mind on the other (this is the part which he ascribes to Kratylus)[81]--but the tentative march of an enquirer groping after truth, who follows the suggestive promptings of his own invention, without knowing whither it will conduct him: who, having in his mind different and even opposite points of view, unfolds first arguments on behalf of one, and next those on behalf of the other, without pledging himself either to the one or to the other, or to any definite scheme of compromise between them.[82] Those who take no interest in such circuitous gropings and guesses of an inquisitive and yet unsatisfied mind--those who ask for nothing but a conclusion clearly enunciated along with one or two affirmative reasons--may find the dialogue tiresome. However this may be--it is a manner found in many Platonic dialogues.

[Footnote 79: Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Kratyl. p. 18--"quos Plato hoc libro acerbissimo sale perfricandos statuit." Schleiermacher also tells us (Einleitung, pp. 17-21) that "Plato had much delight in heaping a full measure of ridicule upon his enemy Antisthenes; and that he at last became tired with the exuberance of his own philological jests". Lassalle shows, with much force, that the persons ridiculed (even if we grant the derisory purpose to be established) cannot be Protagoras and the Protagoreans (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 376-384).]

[Footnote 80: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 B, 391 B.]

[Footnote 81: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 428 A, 440 D.]

[Footnote 82: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C. 391 A. [Greek: suzêtei=n e(/toimo/s ei)mi kai\ soi\ kai\ Kratu/lô| koinê=| . . . o(/ti ou)k ei)dei/ên a)lla\ skepsoi/mên meta\ sou=.]]

[Side-note: Theory laid down by Sokrates à priori, in the first part--Great difficulty, and ingenuity necessary, to bring it into harmony with facts.]

Sokrates opens his case by declaring the thesis of the Absolute (Object sine Subject), against the Protagorean thesis of the Relative (Object cum Subject). Things have an absolute essence: names have an absolute essence:[83] each name belongs to its own thing, and to no other: this is its rectitude: none but that rare person, the artistic name-giver, can detect the essence of each thing, and the essence of each name, so as to apply the name rightly. Here we have a theory truly Platonic: impressed upon Plato's mind by a sentiment à priori, and not from any survey or comparison of particulars. Accordingly when Sokrates is called upon to apply his theory to existing current words, and to make out how any such rectitude can be shown to belong to them--he finds the greatest divergence and incongruity between the two. His ingenuity is hardly tasked to reconcile them: and he is obliged to have recourse to bold and multiplied hypotheses. That the first Name-Givers were artists proceeding upon system, but incompetent artists proceeding on a bad system--they were Herakleiteans who believed in the universality of movement, and gave names having reference to movement:[84] That the various letters of the alphabet, or rather the different actions of the vocal organism by which they are pronounced, have each an inherent, essential, adaptation, or analogy to the phenomena of movement or arrest of movement:[85] That the names originally bestowed have become disguised by a variety of metamorphoses, but may be brought back to their original by probable suppositions, and shown to possess the rectitude sought. All these hypotheses are only violent efforts to reconcile the Platonic à priori theory, in some way or other, with existing facts of language. To regard them as intentional caricatures, would be to suppose that Plato is seeking intentionally to discredit and deride his own theory of the Absolute: for the discredit could fall nowhere else. We see that Plato considered many of his own guesses as strange and novel, some even as laying him open to ridicule.[86] But they were indispensable to bring his theory into something like coherence, however inadequate, with real language.

[Footnote 83: One cannot but notice how Plato, shortly after having declared war against the Relativity affirmed by Protagoras, falls himself into that very track of Relativity when he comes to speak about actual language, telling us that names are imposed on grounds dependant on or relative to the knowledge or belief of the Name-givers. Kratylus, pp. 397 B, 399 A, 401 A-B, 411 B, 436 B.

The like doctrine is affirmed in the Republic, vi. p. 515 B. [Greek: dê=lon o(/ti o( the/menos prô=tos ta\ o)no/mata, oi(=a ê(gei=to ei)=nai ta\ pra/gmata, toiau=ta e)ti/theto kai\ ta\ o)no/mata.]

Leibnitz conceived an idea of a "Lingua Characterica Universalis, quæ simul sit ars inveniendi et judicandi" (see Leibnitz Opp. Erdmann, pp. 162-163), and he alludes to a conception of Jacob Böhme, that there once existed a Lingua Adamica or Natur-Sprache, through which the essences of things might be contemplated and understood. "Lingua Adamica vel certé vis ejus, quam quidam se nosse, et in nominibus ab Adamo impositis essentias rerum intueri posse contendunt--nobis certé ignota est" (Opp. p. 93). Leibnitz seems to have thought that it was possible to construct a philosophical language, based upon an Alphabetum Cogitationum Humanarum, through which problems on all subjects might be resolved, by a calculus like that which is employed for the solution of arithmetical or geometrical problems (Opp. p. 83; compare also p. 356).

This is very analogous to the affirmations of Sokrates, in the first part of the Kratylus, about the essentiality of Names discovered and declared by the [Greek: nomothe/tês techniko/s]]

[Footnote 84: Plato, Kratyl. p. 436 D.]

[Footnote 85: Plato, Krat. pp. 424-425. Schleiermacher declares this to be among the greatest and most profound truths which have ever been enunciated about language (Introduction to Kratylus, p. 11). Stallbaum, on the contrary, regards it as not even seriously meant, but mere derision of others (Prolegg. ad Krat. p. 12). Another commentator on Plato calls it "eine Lehre der Sophistischen Sprachforscher" (August Arnold, Einleitung in die Philosophie--durch die Lehre Platons vermittelt--p. 178, Berlin, 1841).

Proklus, in his Commentary, says that the scope of this dialogue is to exhibit the imitative or generative faculty which essentially belongs to the mind, and whereby the mind (aided by the vocal or pronunciative imagination--[Greek: lektikê\ phantasi/a]) constructs names which are natural transcripts of the essences of things (Proklus, Schol. ad Kratyl. pp. 1-21 ed. Boissonnade; Alkinous, Introd. ad Platon. c. 6).

Ficinus, too, in his argument to the Kratylus (p. 768), speaks much about the mystic sanctity of names, recognised not merely by Pythagoras and Plato, but also by the Jews and Orientals. He treats the etymologies in the Kratylus as seriously intended. He says not a word about any intention on the part of Plato to deride the Sophists or any other Etymologists.

So also Sydenham, in his translation of Plato's Philêbus (p. 33), designates the Kratylus as "a dialogue in which is taught the nature of things, as well the permanent as the transient, by a supposed etymology of Names and Words".]

[Footnote 86: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425 D, 426 B. Because Sokrates says that these etymologies may appear ridiculous, we are not to infer that he proposed them as caricatures; see what Plato says in the Republic, v. p. 452, about his own propositions respecting the training of women, which others (he says) will think ludicrous, but which he proposes with the most thorough and serious conviction.]

[Side-note: Opposite tendencies of Sokrates in the last half of the dialogue--he disconnects his theory of Naming from the Herakleitean doctrine.]

In the second part of the dialogue, where Kratylus is introduced as uncompromising champion of this same theory, Sokrates changes his line of argument, and impugns the peremptory or exclusive pretensions of the theory: first denying some legitimate corollaries from it--next establishing by the side of it the counter-theory of Hermogenes, as being an inferior though indispensable auxiliary--yet still continuing to uphold it as an ideal of what is Best. He concludes by disconnecting the theory pointedly from the doctrine of Herakleitus, with which Kratylus connected it, and by maintaining that there can be no right naming, and no sound knowledge, if that doctrine be admitted.[87] The Platonic Ideas, eternal and unchangeable, are finally opposed to Kratylus as the only objects truly knowable and nameable--and therefore as the only conditions under which right naming can be realised. The Name-givers of actual society have failed in their task by proceeding on a wrong doctrine: neither they nor the names which they have given can be trusted.[88] The doctrine of perpetual change or movement is true respecting the sensible world and particulars, but it is false respecting the intelligible world or universals--Ideas and Forms. These latter are the only things knowable: but we cannot know them through names: we must study them by themselves and by their own affinities.

[Footnote 87: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D. [Greek: A)=r' ou)=n oi(=on te proseipei=n au)to\ o)rthôs, ei) a)ei\ u(pexe/chetai?]]

[Footnote 88: Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. Compare pp. 436 D, 439 B.

Lassalle contends that Herakleitus and his followers considered the knowledge of names to be not only indispensable to the knowledge of things, but equivalent to and essentially embodying that knowledge. (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 363-368-387.) See also a passage of Proklus, in his Commentary on the Platonic Parmenidês, p. 476, ed. Stallbaum.

The remarkable passage in the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysica, wherein he speaks of Plato and Plato's early familiarity with Kratylus and the Herakleitean opinions, coincides very much with the course of the Platonic dialogue Kratylus, from its beginning to its end (Aristot. Metaphys. A. p. 987 a-b).]

How this is to be done, Sokrates professes himself unable to say. We may presume him to mean, that a true Artistic Name-giver must set the example, knowing these Forms or essences beforehand, and providing for each its appropriate Name, or Name-Form, significant by essential analogy.

[Side-note: Ideal of the best system of naming--the Name-Giver ought to be familiar with the Platonic Ideas or Essences, and apportion his names according to resemblances among them.]

Herein, so far as I can understand, consists the amount of positive inference which Plato enables us to draw from the Kratylus. Sokrates began by saying that names having natural rectitude were the only materials out of which a language could be formed: he ends by affirming merely that this is the best and most perfect mode of formation: he admits that names may become significant, though loosely and imperfectly, by convention alone--yet the best scheme would be, that in which they are significant by inherent resemblance to the thing named. But this cannot be done until the Name-giver, instead of proceeding upon the false theory of Herakleitus, starts from the true theory recognising the reality of eternal, unchangeable, Ideas or Forms. He will distinguish, and embody in appropriate syllables, those Forms of Names which truly resemble, and have natural connection with, the Forms of Things.

Such is the ideal of perfect or philosophical Naming, as Plato conceives it--disengaged from those divinations of the origin and metamorphoses of existing names, which occupy so much of the dialogue.[89] He does not indeed attempt to construct a body of true names à priori, but he sets forth the real nameable permanent essences, to which these names might be assimilated: the principles upon which the construction ought to be founded, by the philosophic lawgiver following out a good theory:[90] and he contrasts this process with two rival processes, each defective in its own way. This same contrast, pervading Plato's views on other subjects, deserves a few words of illustration.

[Footnote 89: Deuschle (Die Platonische Sprachphilosophie, p. 57) tells us that in this dialogue "Plato intentionally presented many of his thoughts in a covert or contradictory and unintelligible manner". (Vieles absichtlich verhüllt oder widersprechend und missverständlich dargestellt wird.)

I see no probability in such an hypothesis.

Respecting the origin and primordial signification of language, a great variety of different opinions have been started.

William von Humboldt (Werke, vi. 80) assumes that there must have been some primitive and natural bond between each sound and its meaning (i.e. that names were originally significant [Greek: phu/sei]), though there are very few particular cases in which such connexion can be brought to evidence or even divined. (Here we see that the larger knowledge of etymology possessed at present deters the modern philologer from that which Plato undertakes in the Kratylus.) He distinguishes a threefold relation between the name and the thing signified. 1. Directly imitative. 2. Indirectly imitative or symbolical. 3. Imitative by one remove, or analogical: where a name becomes transferred from one object to another, by virtue of likeness between the two objects. (Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechtes, p. 78, Berlin, 1880.)

Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, in his Etymology of the English Language (see Prelim. Disc. p. 10 seq.), recognises the same imitative origin, and tries to apply the principle to particular English words. Mr. F. W. Farrar, in his recent interesting work (Chapters on Language) has explained and enforced copiously the like thesis--onomatopoeic origin for language generally. He has combated the objections of Professor Max Müller, who considers the principle to be of little applicability or avail. But M. Renan assigns to it not less importance than Mr. Wedgwood and Mr. Farrar. (See sixth chapter of his ingenious dissertation De l'Origine du Langage, pp. 135-146-148.)

"L'imitation, ou l'onomatopée, paraît avoir été le procédé ordinaire d'après lequel les premiers nomenclateurs formèrent les appellations. . . D'ailleurs, comme le choix de l'appellation n'est point arbitraire, et que jamais l'homme ne se décide à assembler des sons au hasard pour en faire les signes de la pensée, on peut affirmer que de tous les mots actuellement usités, il n'en est pas un seul qui n'ait eu sa raison suffisante, et ne se rattache, à travers mille transformations, à une élection primitive. Or, le motif déterminant pour le choix des mots a dû être, dans la plupart des cas, le désir d'imiter l'objet qu'on voulait exprimer. L'instinct de certains animaux suffit pour les porter à ce genre d'imitation, qui, faute de principes rationnels, reste chez eux infécond. . .

"En résumé, le caprice n'a eu aucune part dans la formation du langage. Sans doute, on ne peut admettre qu'il y ait une relation intrinsèque entre le nom et la chose. Le système que Platon a si subtilement développé dans le Cratyle--cette thèse qu'il y a des dénominations naturelles, et que la propriété des mots se reconnaîlt à l'imitation plus ou moins exacte de l'objet,--pourrait tout au plus s'appliquer aux noms formés par onomatopée, et pour ceux-ci mêmes, la loi dont nous parlous n'établit qu'une convenance. Les appellations n'ont pas uniquement leur cause dans l'objet appelé (sans quoi, elles seraient les mêmes dans toutes les langues), mais dans l'objet appelé, vu à travers les dispositions personnelles du sujet appelant. . . La raison qui a déterminé le choix des premiers hommes peut nous échapper; mais elle a existé. La liaison du sens et du mot n'est jamais nécessaire, jamais arbitraire; toujours elle est motivée."

When M. Renan maintains the Protagorean doctrine, that it is not the Object which is cause of the denomination given, but the Object seen through the personal dispositions of the denominating Subject--he contradicts the reasoning of the Platonic Sokrates in the conversation with Hermogenes (pp. 386-387; compare 424 A). But he adopts the reasoning of the same in the subsequent conversation with Kratylus; wherein the relative point of view is introduced for the first time (pp. 429 A-B, 431 E), and brought more and more into the foreground (pp. 436 B-D--437 C--439 C).

The distinction drawn by M. Renan between l'arbitraire and le motivé appears to me unfounded: at least, it requires a peculiar explanation of the two words--for if by le caprice and l'arbitraire be meant the exclusion of all motive, such a state of mind could not be a preliminary to any proceeding at all. M. Renan can only mean that the motive which led to the original choice of the name, was peculiar to the occasion, and has since been forgotten. And this is what he himself says in a note to his Preface (pp. 18-19), replying to M. Littré: "L'Arien primitif a eu un motif pour appeler le frère bhratr ou fratr, et le Sémite pour l'appeler ah: peut on dire que cette différence résulte ou des aptitudes différentes de leur esprit, ou du spectacle extérieur? Chaque objet, les circonstances restant les mêmes, a été susceptible d'une foule de dénominations: le choix qui a été fait de l'une d'elles tient à des causes impossibles à saisir."]

[Footnote 90: Plato (in Timæus, p. 29 B) recognises an essential affinity between the eternal Forms and the words or propositions in which they become subjects of discourse.]

[Side-note: Comparison of Plato's views about naming with those upon social institutions. Artistic, systematic construction--contrasted with unpremeditated unsystematic growth.]

Respecting social institutions and government, there is one well-known theory to which Sir James Mackintosh gave expression in the phrase--"Governments are not made, but grow". The like phrase has been applied by an eminent modern author on Logic, to language--"Languages are not made, but grow".[91] One might suppose, in reading the second and third books of the Republic of Plato, that Plato also had adopted this theory: for the growth of a society, without any initiative or predetermined construction by a special individual, is there strikingly depicted.[92] But in truth it is this theory which stands in most of the Platonic works, as the antithesis depreciated and discredited by Plato. The view most satisfactory to him contemplates the analogy of a human artist or professional man; which he enlarges into the idea of an originating, intelligent, artistic, Constructor, as the source of all good. This view is exhibited to us in the Timæus, where we find the Demiurgus, building up by his own fiat all that is good in the Kosmos: in the Politikus, where we find the individual dictator producing by his uncontrolled ordinance all that is really good in the social system;--lastly, here also in the Kratylus, where we have the scientific or artistic Name-giver, and him alone, set forth as competent to construct an assemblage of names, each possessing full and perfect rectitude. To this theory there is presented a counter-theory, which Plato disapproves--a Kosmos which grows by itself and keeps up its own agencies, without any extra-kosmic constructor or superintendent: in like manner, an aggregate of social customs, and an aggregate of names, which have grown up no one knows how; and which sustain and perpetuate themselves by traditional force--by movement already acquired in a given direction. The idea of growth, by regular assignable steps and by regularising tendencies instinctive and inherent in Nature, belongs rather to Aristotle; Plato conceives Nature as herself irregular, and as persuaded or constrained into some sort of regularity by a supernatural or extranatural artist.[93]

[Footnote 91: See Mr. John Stuart Mill's Logic, Book i. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 92: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 seq., where the [Greek: ge/nesis] of a social community, out of common necessity and desire acting upon all and each of the individual citizens, is depicted in a striking way. The [Greek: a)rchê] of the City (p. 369 B) as Plato there presents it, is Aristotelian rather than Platonic.]

[Footnote 93: M. Destutt de Tracy insists upon the emotional initiative force, as deeper and more efficacious than the intellectual, in the first formation of language.

"Dans l'origine du langage d'action, un seul geste dit--je veux cela, ou je vous montre cela, ou je vous demande secours; un seul cri dit, je vous appelle, ou je souffre, ou je suis content, &c.; mais sans distinguer aucune des idées qui composent ses propositions. Ce n'est point par le détail, mais par les masses, que, commencent toutes nos expressions, ainsi que toutes nos connaissances. Si quelques langages possèdent des signes propres à exprimer des idées isolées, ce n'est donc que par l'effet de la décomposition qui s'est opérée dans ces langages; et ces signes, ou noms propres d'idées, ne sont, pour ainsi dire, que des débris, des fragmens, ou du moins des émanations de ceux qui d'abord exprimaient, bien ou mal, les propositions tout entières." (Destutt de Tracy, Grammaire, ch. i. p. 23, ed. 1825; see also the Idéologie of the same author, ch. xvi. p. 215.)

M. Renan enunciates in the most explicit terms this comparison of the formation of language to the growth and development of a germ:--"Les langues doivent êtres comparées, non au cristal qui se forme par agglomération autour d'un noyau, mais au germe qui se développe par sa force intime, et par l'appel nécessaire de ses parties". (De l'Origine du Langage, ch. iii. p. 101; also ch. iv. pp. 115-117.)

The theory of M. Renan, in this ingenious treatise, is, that language is the product of "la raison spontanée, la raison populaire," without reflexion. "La reflexion n'y peut rien: les langues sont sorties toutes faites du moule même de l'esprit humain, comme Minerve du cerveau de Jupiter." "Maintenant que la raison réfléchie a remplacé l'instinct créateur, à peine le génie suffit-il pour analyser ce que les l'esprit des premiers hommes enfanta de toutes pièces, et sans y songer" (pp. 98-99). This theory appears to me very doubtful; as much as there is proved in it, is stated in a good passage cited by M. Renan from Will. von Humboldt (pp. 106-107). But there are two remarks to be made, in comparing it with the Kratylus of Plato. 1. That the hypothesis of a philosopher "qui compose un langage de sang-froid," which appears absurd to Turgot and M. Renan (p. 92), did not appear absurd to Plato, but on the contrary as the only sure source of what is good and right in language. 2. That Plato, in the Kratylus, takes account only of naming, and not of the grammatical structure of language, which M. Renan considers the essential part (p. 106: compare also pp. 208-209). Grammar, with its established analogies, does not seem to have been present to Plato's mind as an object of reflexion; there existed none in his day.]

[Side-note: Politikus compared with Kratylus.]

Looking back to the Politikus (reviewed in the last chapter), we find Plato declaring to us wherein consists the rectitude of a social Form: it resides in the presiding and uncontrolled authority of a scientific or artistic Ruler, always present and directing every one: or of a few such Rulers, if there be a few--though this is more than can be hoped. But such rectitude is seldom or never realised. Existing social systems are bad copies of this type, degenerating more or less widely from its perfection. One or a Few persons arrogate to themselves uncontrolled power, without possessing that science or art which justifies the exercise of it in the Right Ruler. These are, or may become, extreme depravations. The least bad, among all the imperfect systems, is an aggregate of fixed laws and magistrates with known functions, agreed to by convention of all and faithfully obeyed by all. But such a system of fixed laws, though second-best, falls greatly short of rectitude. It is much inferior in every way to the uncontrolled authority of the scientific Ruler.[94]

[Footnote 94: See Plato, Politik. pp. 300-301.]

That which Plato does for social systems in the Politikus, he does for names in the Kratylus. The full rectitude of names is when they are bestowed by the scientific Ruler, considered in the capacity of Name-giver. He it is who discerns, and embodies in syllables, the true Name-Form in each particular case. But such an artist is seldom realised: and there are others who, attempting to do his work without his knowledge, perform it ignorantly or under false theories.[95] The names thus given are imperfect names: moreover, after being given, they become corrupted and transformed in passing from man to man. Lastly, the mere fact of convention among the individuals composing the society, without any deliberate authorship or origination from any Ruler, bad or good--suffices to impart to Names a sort of significance, vulgar and imperfect, yet adequate to a certain extent.[96] The Name-giving Artist or Lawgiver is here superseded by King Nomos.

[Footnote 95: Plato, Kratyl. p. 432 E.]

[Footnote 96: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 434 E, 435 A-B.

This unsystematic, spontaneous, origin and growth of language is set forth by Lucretius, who declares himself opposed to the theory of an originating Name-giver (v. pp. 1021-1060). Jacob Grimm and M. Renan espouse a theory, in the main, similar.]

[Side-note: Ideal of Plato--Postulate of the One Wise Man--Badness of all reality.]

It will be seen that in both these cases the Platonic point of view comes out--deliberate authorship from the scientific or artistic individual mind, as the only source of rectitude and perfection. But when Plato looks at the reality of life, either in social system or in names, he finds no such perfection anywhere: he discovers a divine agency originating what is good; but there is an independent agency necessary in the way of co-operation, though it sometimes counteracts and always debases the good.[97] We find either an incompetent dictator who badly imitates the true Artist--or else we have fixed, peremptory, laws; depending on the unsystematic, unauthorised, convention among individuals, which has grown up no one knows how--which is transmitted by tradition, being taught by every one and learnt by every one without any privileged caste of teachers--and which in the Platonic Protagoras is illustrated in the mythe and discourse ascribed to that Sophist;[98] being in truth, common sense, as contrasted with professional specialty. In regard to social systems, Plato pronounces fixed laws to be the second-best--enjoining strict obedience to them, wherever the first-best cannot be obtained. In the Republic he enumerates what are the conditions of rectitude in a city: but he admits at the same time that this Right Civic Constitution is an ideal, nowhere to be found existing: and he points out the successive stages of corruption by which it degenerates more and more into conformity with the realities of human society. As with Right Civic Constitution, so with Right Naming: Plato shows what constitutes rectitude of Names, but he admits that this is an ideal seen nowhere, and he notes the various causes which deprave the Right Names into that imperfect and semi-significant condition, which is the best that existing languages present.[99]

[Footnote 97: Plato, Timæus, p. 68 E.]

[Footnote 98: See my remarks on the Politikus, in the last chapter: also Protagoras, p. 320 seq.

Compare Plato, Kriton, p. 48 A. [Greek: o( e)pai+/ôn peri\ tô dikai/ôn, o( ei(=s.]

In the Menon also the same question is broached as in the Protagoras, whether virtue is teachable or not? and how any virtue can exist, when there are no special teachers, and no special learners of virtue? Here we have, though differently handled, the same antithesis between the ethical sentiment which grows and propagates itself unconsciously, without special initiative--and that which is deliberately prescribed and imparted by the wise individual: common sense versus professional specialty.]

[Footnote 99: See the conditions of the [Greek: o)rthê\ politei/a], and its gradual depravation and degeneracy into the state of actual governments, in Republic, v. init. p. 449 B, vii. 544 A-B.]

[Side-note: Comparison of Kratylus, Theætêtus, and Sophistês, in treatment of the question respecting Non-Ens, and the possibility of false propositions.]

One more remark, in reference to the general spirit and reciprocal bearing of Plato's dialogues. In three comparison distinct dialogues--Kratylus, Theætêtus, Sophistês--one and the same question is introduced into the discussion: a question keenly debated among the contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle. How is a false proposition possible? Many held that a false proposition and a false name were impossible: that you could not speak the thing that is not, or Non-Ens ([Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n]): that such a proposition would be an empty sound, without meaning or signification: that speech may be significant or insignificant, but could not be false, except in the sense of being unmeaning.[100]

[Footnote 100: Plato, Kratyl. p. 429.

Ammonius, Scholia [Greek: ei)s ta\s Katêgori/as] of Aristotle (Schol. Brandis, p. 60, a. 10).

[Greek: Tine/s phasi mêde\n ei)=nai tô=n pro/s ti phu/sei, a)lla\ a)na/plasma ei)=nai tau=ta tê=s ê(mete/ras dianoi/as, le/gontes o(/ti ou(/tôs ou)k e)sti\ phu/sei ta\ pro/s ti a)lla\ the/sei . . . Tine\s de/, e)k diame/trou tou/tois e)/chontes, pa/nta ta\ o)/nta pro/s ti e)/legon. Ô(=n ei)=s ê)=n Prôtago/ras o( sophistê/s; . . . dio\ kai\ e)/legen o(/ti ou)k e)/sti tina\ pseudê= le/gein; e(/kastos ga\r kata\ to\ phaino/menon au)tô=| kai\ dokou=n a)pophai/netai peri\ tô=n pragma/tôn, ou)k e)cho/ntôn ô(risme/nên phu/sin a)ll' e)n tê=| pro\s ê(ma=s sche/sei to\ ei)=nai e)cho/ntôn.]]

Now this doctrine is dealt with in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Kratylus. In the Theætêtus,[101] Sokrates examines it at great length, and proposes several different hypotheses to explain how a false proposition might be possible: but ends in pronouncing them all inadmissible. He declares himself incompetent, and passes on to something else. Again, in the Sophistês, the same point is taken up, and discussed there also very copiously.[102] The Eleate in that dialogue ends by finding a solution which satisfies him (viz.: that [Greek: to\ mê o)\n = to\ e(/teron o)/ntos]). But what is remarkable is, that the solution does not meet any of the difficulties propounded in the Theætêtus; nor are those difficulties at all adverted to in the Sophistês. Finally, in the Kratylus, we have the very same doctrine, that false affirmations are impossible--which both in the Theætêtus and in the Sophistês is enunciated, not as the decided opinion of the speaker, but as a problem which embarrasses him--we have this same doctrine averred unequivocally by Kratylus as his own full conviction. And Sokrates finds that a very short argument, and a very simple comparison, suffice to refute him.[103] The supposed "aggressive cross-examiner," who presses Sokrates so hard in the Theætêtus, is not allowed to put his puzzling questions in the Kratylus.[104]

[Footnote 101: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 187 D to 201 D. The discussion of the point is continued through thirteen pages of Stephan. Edit.]

[Footnote 102: Plato, Sophistês, pp. 237 A, 264 B, through twenty-seven pages of Steph. edit.--though there are some digressions included herein.]

[Footnote 103: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 430-431 A-B.]

[Footnote 104: Plato, Theætêt. p. 200 A. [Greek: o( ga\r e)legktiko\s e)kei=nos gela/sas phê/sei.]]

[Side-note: Discrepancies and inconsistencies of Plato, in his manner of handling the same subject.]

How are we to explain these three different modes of handling the same question by the same philosopher? If the question about Non-Ens can be disposed of in the summary way which we read in the Kratylus, what is gained by the string of unsolved puzzles in the Theætêtus--or by the long discursive argument in the Sophistês, ushering in a new solution noway satisfactory? If, on the contrary, the difficulties which are unsolved in the Theætêtus, and imperfectly solved in the Sophistês, are real and pertinent--how are we to explain the proceeding of Plato in the Kratylus, when he puts into the mouth of Kratylus a distinct averment of the opinion, about Non-Ens, yet without allowing him, when it is impugned by Sokrates, to urge any of these pertinent arguments in defence of it? If the peculiar solution given in the Sophistês be the really genuine and triumphant solution, why is it left unnoticed both in the Kratylus and the Theætêtus, and why is it contradicted in other dialogues? Which of the three dialogues represents Plato's real opinion on the question?

[Side-note: No common didactic purpose pervading the Dialogues--each is a distinct composition, working out its own peculiar argument.]

To these questions, and to many others of like bearing, connected with the Platonic writings, I see no satisfactory reply, if we are to consider Plato as a positive philosopher, with a scheme and edifice of methodised opinions in his mind: and as composing all his dialogues with a set purpose, either of inculcating these opinions on the reader, or of refuting the opinions opposed to them. This supposition is what most Platonic critics have in their minds, even when professedly modifying it. Their admiration for Plato is not satisfied unless they conceive him in the professorial chair as a teacher, surrounded by a crowd of learners, all under the obligation (incumbent on learners generally) to believe what they hear. Reasoning upon such a basis, the Platonic dialogues present themselves to me as a mystery. They exhibit neither identity of the teacher, nor identity of the matter taught: the composer (to use various Platonic comparisons) is Many, and not One--he is more complex than Typhos.[105]

[Footnote 105: Plato, Phædrus, p. 230 A.]

If we are to find any common purpose pervading and binding together all the dialogues, it must not be a didactic purpose, in the sense above defined. The value of them consists, not in the result, but in the discussion--not in the conclusion, but in the premisses for and against it. In this sense all the dialogues have value, and all the same sort of value--though not all equal in amount. In different dialogues, the same subject is set before you in different ways: with remarks and illustrations sometimes tending towards one theory, sometimes towards another. It is for you to compare and balance them, and to elicit such result as your reason approves. The Platonic dialogues require, in order to produce their effect, a supplementary responsive force, and a strong effective reaction, from the individual reason of the reader: they require moreover that he shall have a genuine interest in the process of dialectic scrutiny ([Greek: to\ philomathe/s, philo/logon])[106] which will enable him to perceive beauties in what would appear tiresome to others.

[Footnote 106: Plato, Republic, v. p. 475; compare Phædon, pp. 89-90. Phædrus, p. 230 E.]

Such manner of proceeding may be judicious or not, according to the sentiment of the critic. But it is at any rate Platonic. And we have to recall this point of view when dismissing the Kratylus, which presents much interest in the premisses and conflicting theories, with little or no result. It embodies the oldest speculations known to us respecting the origin, the mode of signification, and the functions of words as an instrument: and not the least interesting part of it, in my judgment, consists in its etymological conjectures, affording evidence of a rude etymological sense which has now passed away.