Cratylus ................................................................................................................................................................1

Plato.........................................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................1

CRATYLUS..........................................................................................................................................34

The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and

perfection of style and metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of the Platonic

writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not

succeeded in dispelling. We need not suppose that Plato used words in order to conceal his thoughts, or that

he would have been unintelligible to an educated contemporary. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also

find a difficulty in determining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote satires in the form of dialogues, and

his meaning, like that of other satirical writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may be

assigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness of this species of composition; 2nd, the

difficulty of reproducing a state of life and literature which has passed away. A satire is unmeaning unless we

can place ourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in which it was written. Had the treatise

of Antisthenes upon words, or the speculations of Cratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth century

B.C., on the nature of language been preserved to us; or if we had lived at the time, and been 'rich enough to

attend the fiftydrachma course of Prodicus,' we should have understood Plato better, and many points which

are now attributed to the extravagance of Socrates' humour would have been found, like the allusions of

Aristophanes in the Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists and grammarians of the day.

For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questions were beginning to be asked

about language which were parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated

in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a correctness in words, and were they given by

nature or convention? In the presocratic philosophy mankind had been striving to attain an expression of their

ideas, and now they were beginning to ask themselves whether the expression might not be distinguished

from the idea? They were also seeking to distinguish the parts of speech and to enquire into the relation of

subject and predicate. Grammar and logic were moving about somewhere in the depths of the human soul,

but they were not yet awakened into consciousness and had not found names for themselves, or terms by

which they might be expressed. Of these beginnings of the study of language we know little, and there

necessarily arises an obscurity when the surroundings of such a work as the Cratylus are taken away.

Moreover, in this, as in most of the dialogues of Plato, allowance has to be made for the character of

Socrates. For the theory of language can only be propounded by him in a manner which is consistent with his

own profession of ignorance. Hence his ridicule of the new school of etymology is interspersed with many

declarations 'that he knows nothing,' 'that he has learned from Euthyphro,' and the like. Even the truest things

which he says are depreciated by himself. He professes to be guessing, but the guesses of Plato are better than

The dialogue hardly derives any light from Plato's other writings, and still less from Scholiasts and

Neoplatonist writers. Socrates must be interpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a

difficulty in understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other interlocutors in the dialogue. Does he

agree with Cratylus or with Hermogenes, and is he serious in those fanciful etymologies, extending over

more than half the dialogue, which he seems so greatly to relish? Or is he serious in part only; and can we

separate his jest from his earnest?Sunt bona, sunt quaedum mediocria, sunt mala plura. Most of them are

ridiculously bad, and yet among them are found, as if by accident, principles of philology which are

unsurpassed in any ancient writer, and even in advance of any philologer of the last century. May we suppose

that Plato, like Lucian, has been amusing his fancy by writing a comedy in the form of a prose dialogue? And

what is the final result of the enquiry? Is Plato an upholder of the conventional theory of language, which he

acknowledges to be imperfect? or does he mean to imply that a perfect language can only be based on his

own theory of ideas? Or if this latter explanation is refuted by his silence, then in what relation does his

account of language stand to the rest of his philosophy? Or may we be so bold as to deny the connexion

between them? (For the allusion to the ideas at the end of the dialogue is merely intended to show that we

must not put words in the place of things or realities, which is a thesis strongly insisted on by Plato in many

other passages)...These are some of the first thoughts which arise in the mind of the reader of the Cratylus.

And the consideration of them may form a convenient introduction to the general subject of the dialogue.

We must not expect all the parts of a dialogue of Plato to tend equally to some clearlydefined end. His idea

of literary art is not the absolute proportion of the whole, such as we appear to find in a Greek temple or

statue; nor should his works be tried by any such standard. They have often the beauty of poetry, but they

have also the freedom of conversation. 'Words are more plastic than wax' (Rep.), and may be moulded into

any form. He wanders on from one topic to another, careless of the unity of his work, not fearing any 'judge,

or spectator, who may recall him to the point' (Theat.), 'whither the argument blows we follow' (Rep.). To

have determined beforehand, as in a modern didactic treatise, the nature and limits of the subject, would have

been fatal to the spirit of enquiry or discovery, which is the soul of the dialogue...These remarks are

applicable to nearly all the works of Plato, but to the Cratylus and Phaedrus more than any others. See

There is another aspect under which some of the dialogues of Plato may be more truly viewed:they are

dramatic sketches of an argument. We have found that in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno,

we arrived at no conclusionthe different sides of the argument were personified in the different speakers;

but the victory was not distinctly attributed to any of them, nor the truth wholly the property of any. And in

the Cratylus we have no reason to assume that Socrates is either wholly right or wholly wrong, or that Plato,

though he evidently inclines to him, had any other aim than that of personifying, in the characters of

Hermogenes, Socrates, and Cratylus, the three theories of language which are respectively maintained by

The two subordinate persons of the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, are at the opposite poles of the

argument. But after a while the disciple of the Sophist and the follower of Heracleitus are found to be not so

far removed from one another as at first sight appeared; and both show an inclination to accept the third view

which Socrates interposes between them. First, Hermogenes, the poor brother of the rich Callias, expounds

the doctrine that names are conventional; like the names of slaves, they may be given and altered at pleasure.

This is one of those principles which, whether applied to society or language, explains everything and

nothing. For in all things there is an element of convention; but the admission of this does not help us to

understand the rational ground or basis in human nature on which the convention proceeds. Socrates first of

all intimates to Hermogenes that his view of language is only a part of a sophistical whole, and ultimately

tends to abolish the distinction between truth and falsehood. Hermogenes is very ready to throw aside the

sophistical tenet, and listens with a sort of half admiration, half belief, to the speculations of Socrates.

Cratylus is of opinion that a name is either a true name or not a name at all. He is unable to conceive of

degrees of imitation; a word is either the perfect expression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound (a fallacy

which is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language). He is at once a philosopher and a

sophist; for while wanting to rest language on an immutable basis, he would deny the possibility of

falsehood. He is inclined to derive all truth from language, and in language he sees reflected the philosophy

of Heracleitus. His views are not like those of Hermogenes, hastily taken up, but are said to be the result of

mature consideration, although he is described as still a young man. With a tenacity characteristic of the

Heracleitean philosophers, he clings to the doctrine of the flux. (Compare Theaet.) Of the real Cratylus we

know nothing, except that he is recorded by Aristotle to have been the friend or teacher of Plato; nor have we

any proof that he resembled the likeness of him in Plato any more than the Critias of Plato is like the real

Critias, or the Euthyphro in this dialogue like the other Euthyphro, the diviner, in the dialogue which is called

Between these two extremes, which have both of them a sophistical character, the view of Socrates is

introduced, which is in a manner the union of the two. Language is conventional and also natural, and the true

conventionalnatural is the rational. It is a work not of chance, but of art; the dialectician is the artificer of

words, and the legislator gives authority to them. They are the expressions or imitations in sound of things. In

a sense, Cratylus is right in saying that things have by nature names; for nature is not opposed either to art or

to law. But vocal imitation, like any other copy, may be imperfectly executed; and in this way an element of

chance or convention enters in. There is much which is accidental or exceptional in language. Some words

have had their original meaning so obscured, that they require to be helped out by convention. But still the

true name is that which has a natural meaning. Thus nature, art, chance, all combine in the formation of

language. And the three views respectively propounded by Hermogenes, Socrates, Cratylus, may be

described as the conventional, the artificial or rational, and the natural. The view of Socrates is the

meetingpoint of the other two, just as conceptualism is the meetingpoint of nominalism and realism.

We can hardly say that Plato was aware of the truth, that 'languages are not made, but grow.' But still, when

he says that 'the legislator made language with the dialectician standing on his right hand,' we need not infer

from this that he conceived words, like coins, to be issued from the mint of the State. The creator of laws and

of social life is naturally regarded as the creator of language, according to Hellenic notions, and the

philosopher is his natural advisor. We are not to suppose that the legislator is performing any extraordinary

function; he is merely the Eponymus of the State, who prescribes rules for the dialectician and for all other

artists. According to a truly Platonic mode of approaching the subject, language, like virtue in the Republic,

is examined by the analogy of the arts. Words are works of art which may be equally made in different

materials, and are well made when they have a meaning. Of the process which he thus describes, Plato had

probably no very definite notion. But he means to express generally that language is the product of

A better conception of language could not have been formed in Plato's age, than that which he attributes to

Socrates. Yet many persons have thought that the mind of Plato is more truly seen in the vague realism of

Cratylus. This misconception has probably arisen from two causes: first, the desire to bring Plato's theory of

language into accordance with the received doctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression created

by Socrates himself, that he is not in earnest, and is only indulging the fancy of the hour.

1. We shall have occasion to show more at length, in the Introduction to future dialogues, that the socalled

Platonic ideas are only a semi mythical form, in which he attempts to realize abstractions, and that they are

replaced in his later writings by a rational theory of psychology. (See introductions to the Meno and the

Sophist.) And in the Cratylus he gives a general account of the nature and origin of language, in which Adam

Smith, Rousseau, and other writers of the last century, would have substantially agreed. At the end of the

dialogue, he speaks as in the Symposium and Republic of absolute beauty and good; but he never supposed

that they were capable of being embodied in words. Of the names of the ideas, he would have said, as he says

of the names of the Gods, that we know nothing. Even the realism of Cratylus is not based upon the ideas of

Plato, but upon the flux of Heracleitus. Here, as in the Sophist and Politicus, Plato expressly draws attention

to the want of agreement in words and things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is not the

less Plato's own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, that Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent

2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest. He is discoursing in a highflown vein,

which may be compared to the 'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is speaking,

and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary wisdom. When he is arguing out of Homer, about

the names of Hector's son, or when he describes himself as inspired or maddened by Euthyphro, with whom

he has been sitting from the early dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias; Phaedr.) and expresses his intention

of yielding to the illusion today, and tomorrow he will go to a priest and be purified, we easily see that his

words are not to be taken seriously. In this part of the dialogue his dread of committing impiety, the

pretended derivation of his wisdom from another, the extravagance of some of his etymologies, and, in

general, the manner in which the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us strongly of the

Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending over more than half the dialogue. But then, we remember that the

Euthydemus is a still longer jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is parodying the

ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and

grammarians. The fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic books; and the

etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way into later writers. Some of these are not much worse

than the conjectures of Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove that they are

serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of

When the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has abated, Socrates ends, as he has begun, with a rational

explanation of language. Still he preserves his 'know nothing' disguise, and himself declares his first notions

about names to be reckless and ridiculous. Having explained compound words by resolving them into their

original elements, he now proceeds to analyse simple words into the letters of which they are composed. The

Socrates who 'knows nothing,' here passes into the teacher, the dialectician, the arranger of species. There is

nothing in this part of the dialogue which is either weak or extravagant. Plato is a supporter of the

Onomatopoetic theory of language; that is to say, he supposes words to be formed by the imitation of ideas in

sounds; he also recognises the effect of time, the influence of foreign languages, the desire of euphony, to be

formative principles; and he admits a certain element of chance. But he gives no imitation in all this that he is

preparing the way for the construction of an ideal language. Or that he has any Eleatic speculation to oppose

The theory of language which is propounded in the Cratylus is in accordance with the later phase of the

philosophy of Plato, and would have been regarded by him as in the main true. The dialogue is also a satire

on the philological fancies of the day. Socrates in pursuit of his vocation as a detector of false knowledge,

lights by accident on the truth. He is guessing, he is dreaming; he has heard, as he says in the Phaedrus, from

another: no one is more surprised than himself at his own discoveries. And yet some of his best remarks, as

for example his view of the derivation of Greek words from other languages, or of the permutations of letters,

or again, his observation that in speaking of the Gods we are only speaking of our names of them, occur

We can imagine a character having a profound insight into the nature of men and things, and yet hardly

dwelling upon them seriously; blending inextricably sense and nonsense; sometimes enveloping in a blaze of

jests the most serious matters, and then again allowing the truth to peer through; enjoying the flow of his own

humour, and puzzling mankind by an ironical exaggeration of their absurdities. Such were Aristophanes and

Rabelais; such, in a different style, were Sterne, Jean Paul, Hamann, writers who sometimes become

unintelligible through the extravagance of their fancies. Such is the character which Plato intends to depict in

some of his dialogues as the Silenus Socrates; and through this medium we have to receive our theory of

There remains a difficulty which seems to demand a more exact answer: In what relation does the satirical or

etymological portion of the dialogue stand to the serious? Granting all that can be said about the provoking

irony of Socrates, about the parody of Euthyphro, or Prodicus, or Antisthenes, how does the long catalogue of

etymologies furnish any answer to the question of Hermogenes, which is evidently the main thesis of the

After illustrating the nature of correctness by the analogy of the arts, and then, as in the Republic, ironically

appealing to the authority of the Homeric poems, Socrates shows that the truth or correctness of names can

only be ascertained by an appeal to etymology. The truth of names is to be found in the analysis of their

elements. But why does he admit etymologies which are absurd, based on Heracleitean fancies, fourfold

interpretations of words, impossible unions and separations of syllables and letters?

1. The answer to this difficulty has been already anticipated in part: Socrates is not a dogmatic teacher, and

therefore he puts on this wild and fanciful disguise, in order that the truth may be permitted to appear: 2. as

Benfey remarks, an erroneous example may illustrate a principle of language as well as a true one: 3. many of

these etymologies, as, for example, that of dikaion, are indicated, by the manner in which Socrates speaks of

them, to have been current in his own age: 4. the philosophy of language had not made such progress as

would have justified Plato in propounding real derivations. Like his master Socrates, he saw through the

hollowness of the incipient sciences of the day, and tries to move in a circle apart from them, laying down the

conditions under which they are to be pursued, but, as in the Timaeus, cautious and tentative, when he is

speaking of actual phenomena. To have made etymologies seriously, would have seemed to him like the

interpretation of the myths in the Phaedrus, the task 'of a not very fortunate individual, who had a great deal

of time on his hands.' The irony of Socrates places him above and beyond the errors of his contemporaries.

The Cratylus is full of humour and satirical touches: the inspiration which comes from Euthyphro, and his

prancing steeds, the light admixture of quotations from Homer, and the spurious dialectic which is applied to

them; the jest about the fiftydrachma course of Prodicus, which is declared on the best authority, viz. his

own, to be a complete education in grammar and rhetoric; the double explanation of the name Hermogenes,

either as 'not being in luck,' or 'being no speaker;' the dearlybought wisdom of Callias, the Lacedaemonian

whose name was 'Rush,' and, above all, the pleasure which Socrates expresses in his own dangerous

discoveries, which 'tomorrow he will purge away,' are truly humorous. While delivering a lecture on the

philosophy of language, Socrates is also satirizing the endless fertility of the human mind in spinning

arguments out of nothing, and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in support of a theory.

Etymology in ancient as in modern times was a favourite recreation; and Socrates makes merry at the expense

of the etymologists. The simplicity of Hermogenes, who is ready to believe anything that he is told, heightens

the effect. Socrates in his genial and ironical mood hits right and left at his adversaries: Ouranos is so called

apo tou oran ta ano, which, as some philosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind; the sophists are by a

fanciful explanation converted into heroes; 'the givers of names were like some philosophers who fancy that

the earth goes round because their heads are always going round.' There is a great deal of 'mischief' lurking in

the following: 'I found myself in greater perplexity about justice than I was before I began to learn;' 'The rho

in katoptron must be the addition of some one who cares nothing about truth, but thinks only of putting the

mouth into shape;' 'Tales and falsehoods have generally to do with the Tragic and goatish life, and tragedy is

the place of them.' Several philosophers and sophists are mentioned by name: first, Protagoras and

Euthydemus are assailed; then the interpreters of Homer, oi palaioi Omerikoi (compare Arist. Met.) and the

Orphic poets are alluded to by the way; then he discovers a hive of wisdom in the philosophy of

Heracleitus; the doctrine of the flux is contained in the word ousia (= osia the pushing principle), an

anticipation of Anaxagoras is found in psuche and selene. Again, he ridicules the arbitrary methods of pulling

out and putting in letters which were in vogue among the philologers of his time; or slightly scoffs at

contemporary religious beliefs. Lastly, he is impatient of hearing from the halfconverted Cratylus the

doctrine that falsehood can neither be spoken, nor uttered, nor addressed; a piece of sophistry attributed to

Gorgias, which reappears in the Sophist. And he proceeds to demolish, with no less delight than he had set

In the latter part of the dialogue Socrates becomes more serious, though he does not lay aside but rather

aggravates his banter of the Heracleiteans, whom here, as in the Theaetetus, he delights to ridicule. What was

the origin of this enmity we can hardly determine:was it due to the natural dislike which may be supposed

to exist between the 'patrons of the flux' and the 'friends of the ideas' (Soph.)? or is it to be attributed to the

indignation which Plato felt at having wasted his time upon 'Cratylus and the doctrines of Heracleitus' in the

days of his youth? Socrates, touching on some of the characteristic difficulties of early Greek philosophy,

endeavours to show Cratylus that imitation may be partial or imperfect, that a knowledge of things is higher

than a knowledge of names, and that there can be no knowledge if all things are in a state of transition. But

Cratylus, who does not easily apprehend the argument from common sense, remains unconvinced, and on the

whole inclines to his former opinion. Some profound philosophical remarks are scattered up and down,

admitting of an application not only to language but to knowledge generally; such as the assertion that

'consistency is no test of truth:' or again, 'If we are overprecise about words, truth will say "too late" to us as

The place of the dialogue in the series cannot be determined with certainty. The style and subject, and the

treatment of the character of Socrates, have a close resemblance to the earlier dialogues, especially to the

Phaedrus and Euthydemus. The manner in which the ideas are spoken of at the end of the dialogue, also

indicates a comparatively early date. The imaginative element is still in full vigour; the Socrates of the

Cratylus is the Socrates of the Apology and Symposium, not yet Platonized; and he describes, as in the

Theaetetus, the philosophy of Heracleitus by 'unsavoury' simileshe cannot believe that the world is like 'a

leaky vessel,' or 'a man who has a running at the nose'; he attributes the flux of the world to the swimming in

some folks' heads. On the other hand, the relation of thought to language is omitted here, but is treated of in

the Sophist. These grounds are not sufficient to enable us to arrive at a precise conclusion. But we shall not

be far wrong in placing the Cratylus about the middle, or at any rate in the first half, of the series.

Cratylus, the Heracleitean philosopher, and Hermogenes, the brother of Callias, have been arguing about

names; the former maintaining that they are natural, the latter that they are conventional. Cratylus affirms that

his own is a true name, but will not allow that the name of Hermogenes is equally true. Hermogenes asks

Socrates to explain to him what Cratylus means; or, far rather, he would like to know, What Socrates himself

thinks about the truth or correctness of names? Socrates replies, that hard is knowledge, and the nature of

names is a considerable part of knowledge: he has never been to hear the fiftydrachma course of Prodicus;

and having only attended the singledrachma course, he is not competent to give an opinion on such matters.

When Cratylus denies that Hermogenes is a true name, he supposes him to mean that he is not a true son of

Hermes, because he is never in luck. But he would like to have an open council and to hear both sides.

Hermogenes is of opinion that there is no principle in names; they may be changed, as we change the names

of slaves, whenever we please, and the altered name is as good as the original one.

You mean to say, for instance, rejoins Socrates, that if I agree to call a man a horse, then a man will be rightly

called a horse by me, and a man by the rest of the world? But, surely, there is in words a true and a false, as

there are true and false propositions. If a whole proposition be true or false, then the parts of a proposition

may be true or false, and the least parts as well as the greatest; and the least parts are names, and therefore

names may be true or false. Would Hermogenes maintain that anybody may give a name to anything, and as

many names as he pleases; and would all these names be always true at the time of giving them? Hermogenes

replies that this is the only way in which he can conceive that names are correct; and he appeals to the

practice of different nations, and of the different Hellenic tribes, in confirmation of his view. Socrates asks,

whether the things differ as the words which represent them differ: Are we to maintain with Protagoras,

that what appears is? Hermogenes has always been puzzled about this, but acknowledges, when he is pressed

by Socrates, that there are a few very good men in the world, and a great many very bad; and the very good

are the wise, and the very bad are the foolish; and this is not mere appearance but reality. Nor is he disposed

to say with Euthydemus, that all things equally and always belong to all men; in that case, again, there would

be no distinction between bad and good men. But then, the only remaining possibility is, that all things have

their several distinct natures, and are independent of our notions about them. And not only things, but actions,

have distinct natures, and are done by different processes. There is a natural way of cutting or burning, and a

natural instrument with which men cut or burn, and any other way will fail;this is true of all actions. And

speaking is a kind of action, and naming is a kind of speaking, and we must name according to a natural

process, and with a proper instrument. We cut with a knife, we pierce with an awl, we weave with a shuttle,

we name with a name. And as a shuttle separates the warp from the woof, so a name distinguishes the natures

of things. The weaver will use the shuttle well,that is, like a weaver; and the teacher will use the name

well,that is, like a teacher. The shuttle will be made by the carpenter; the awl by the smith or skilled

person. But who makes a name? Does not the law give names, and does not the teacher receive them from the

legislator? He is the skilled person who makes them, and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how

does the carpenter make or repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at the ideal which he

has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work differ, so ought the instruments which make them to

differ. The several kinds of shuttles ought to answer in material and form to the several kinds of webs. And

the legislator ought to know the different materials and forms of which names are made in Hellas and other

countries. But who is to be the judge of the proper form? The judge of shuttles is the weaver who uses them;

the judge of lyres is the player of the lyre; the judge of ships is the pilot. And will not the judge who is able to

direct the legislator in his work of naming, be he who knows how to use the nameshe who can ask and

answer questionsin short, the dialectician? The pilot directs the carpenter how to make the rudder, and the

dialectician directs the legislator how he is to impose names; for to express the ideal forms of things in

'I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me this natural correctness of names.'

Indeed I cannot; but I see that you have advanced; for you now admit that there is a correctness of names, and

that not every one can give a name. But what is the nature of this correctness or truth, you must learn from

the Sophists, of whom your brother Callias has bought his reputation for wisdom rather dearly; and since they

require to be paid, you, having no money, had better learn from him at secondhand. 'Well, but I have just

given up Protagoras, and I should be inconsistent in going to learn of him.' Then if you reject him you may

learn of the poets, and in particular of Homer, who distinguishes the names given by Gods and men to the

same things, as in the verse about the river God who fought with Hephaestus, 'whom the Gods call Xanthus,

and men call Scamander;' or in the lines in which he mentions the bird which the Gods call 'Chalcis,' and men

'Cymindis;' or the hill which men call 'Batieia,' and the Gods 'Myrinna's Tomb.' Here is an important lesson;

for the Gods must of course be right in their use of names. And this is not the only truth about philology

Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the other name was conferred by the women?

And which are more likely to be rightthe wiser or the less wise, the men or the women? Homer evidently

agreed with the men: and of the name given by them he offers an explanation;the boy was called Astyanax

('king of the city'), because his father saved the city. The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are really

the same,the one means a king, and the other is 'a holder or possessor.' For as the lion's whelp may be

called a lion, or the horse's foal a foal, so the son of a king may be called a king. But if the horse had

produced a calf, then that would be called a calf. Whether the syllables of a name are the same or not makes

no difference, provided the meaning is retained. For example; the names of letters, whether vowels or

consonants, do not correspond to their sounds, with the exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The

name Beta has three letters added to the soundand yet this does not alter the sense of the word, or prevent

the whole name having the value which the legislator intended. And the same may be said of a king and the

son of a king, who like other animals resemble each other in the course of nature; the words by which they

are signified may be disguised, and yet amid differences of sound the etymologist may recognise the same

notion, just as the physician recognises the power of the same drugs under different disguises of colour and

smell. Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, but they have the same meaning; and Agis (leader) is

altogether different in sound from Polemarchus (chief in war), or Eupolemus (good warrior); but the two

words present the same idea of leader or general, like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equally

denote a physician. The son succeeds the father as the foal succeeds the horse, but when, out of the course of

nature, a prodigy occurs, and the offspring no longer resembles the parent, then the names no longer agree.

This may be illustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son Orestes, of whom the former has a name

significant of his patience at the siege of Troy; while the name of the latter indicates his savage,

manofthemountain nature. Atreus again, for his murder of Chrysippus, and his cruelty to Thyestes, is

rightly named Atreus, which, to the eye of the etymologist, is ateros (destructive), ateires (stubborn), atreotos

(fearless); and Pelops is o ta pelas oron (he who sees what is near only), because in his eagerness to win

Hippodamia, he was unconscious of the remoter consequences which the murder of Myrtilus would entail

upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly changed, offers two etymologies; either apo tes tou lithou

talanteias, or apo tou talantaton einai, signifying at once the hanging of the stone over his head in the world

below, and the misery which he brought upon his country. And the name of his father, Zeus, Dios, Zenos, has

an excellent meaning, though hard to be understood, because really a sentence which is divided into two parts

(Zeus, Dios). For he, being the lord and king of all, is the author of our being, and in him all live: this is

implied in the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put together and interpreted is di on ze panta. There

may, at first sight, appear to be some irreverence in calling him the son of Cronos, who is a proverb for

stupidity; but the meaning is that Zeus himself is the son of a mighty intellect; Kronos, quasi koros, not in the

sense of a youth, but quasi to katharon kai akeraton tou nouthe pure and garnished mind, which in turn is

begotten of Uranus, who is so called apo tou oran ta ano, from looking upwards; which, as philosophers say,

is the way to have a pure mind. The earlier portion of Hesiod's genealogy has escaped my memory, or I

would try more conclusions of the same sort. 'You talk like an oracle.' I caught the infection from Euthyphro,

who gave me a long lecture which began at dawn, and has not only entered into my ears, but filled my soul,

and my intention is to yield to the inspiration today; and tomorrow I will be exorcised by some priest or

sophist. 'Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.' Now that we have a general notion, how shall we proceed?

What names will afford the most crucial test of natural fitness? Those of heroes and ordinary men are often

deceptive, because they are patronymics or expressions of a wish; let us try gods and demigods. Gods are so

called, apo tou thein, from the verb 'to run;' because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and they

being the original gods of the Hellenes, as they still are of the Barbarians, their name is given to all Gods. The

demons are the golden race of Hesiod, and by golden he means not literally golden, but good; and they are

called demons, quasi daemones, which in old Attic was used for daimonesgood men are well said to

become daimones when they die, because they are knowing. Eros (with an epsilon) is the same word as eros

(with an eta): 'the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;' or perhaps they were a species

of sophists or rhetoricians, and so called apo tou erotan, or eirein, from their habit of spinning questions; for

eirein is equivalent to legein. I get all this from Euthyphro; and now a new and ingenious idea comes into my

mind, and, if I am not careful, I shall be wiser than I ought to be by tomorrow's dawn. My idea is, that we

may put in and pull out letters at pleasure and alter the accents (as, for example, Dii philos may be turned into

Diphilos), and we may make words into sentences and sentences into words. The name anthrotos is a case in

point, for a letter has been omitted and the accent changed; the original meaning being o anathron a

opopenhe who looks up at what he sees. Psuche may be thought to be the reviving, or refreshing, or

animating principlee anapsuchousa to soma; but I am afraid that Euthyphro and his disciples will scorn this

derivation, and I must find another: shall we identify the soul with the 'ordering mind' of Anaxagoras, and say

that psuche, quasi phuseche = e phusin echei or ochei?this might easily be refined into psyche. 'That is a

After psuche follows soma; this, by a slight permutation, may be either = (1) the 'grave' of the soul, or (2)

may mean 'that by which the soul signifies (semainei) her wishes.' But more probably, the word is Orphic,

and simply denotes that the body is the place of ward in which the soul suffers the penalty of sin,en o

sozetai. 'I should like to hear some more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one of

Zeus.' The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves; but these are unknown to us. Less

true are those by which we propitiate them, as men say in prayers, 'May he graciously receive any name by

which I call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let them know beforehand that we are not presuming

to enquire about them, but only about the names which they usually bear. Let us begin with Hestia. What did

he mean who gave the name Hestia? 'That is a very difficult question.' O, my dear Hermogenes, I believe that

there was a power of philosophy and talk among the first inventors of names, both in our own and in other

languages; for even in foreign words a principle is discernible. Hestia is the same with esia, which is an old

form of ousia, and means the first principle of things: this agrees with the fact that to Hestia the first sacrifices

are offered. There is also another readingosia, which implies that 'pushing' (othoun) is the first principle of

all things. And here I seem to discover a delicate allusion to the flux of Heracleitusthat antediluvian

philosopher who cannot walk twice in the same stream; and this flux of his may accomplish yet greater

marvels. For the names Cronos and Rhea cannot have been accidental; the giver of them must have known

something about the doctrine of Heracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence in the words of

Hesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, 'the origin of Gods;' and in the verse of Orpheus, in which he describes

Oceanus espousing his sister Tethys. Tethys is nothing more than the name of a springto diattomenon kai

ethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the feet, because you cannot walk on the seathe epsilon

is inserted by way of ornament; or perhaps the name may have been originally polleidon, meaning, that the

God knew many things (polla eidos): he may also be the shaker, apo tou seiein,in this case, pi and delta

have been added. Pluto is connected with ploutos, because wealth comes out of the earth; or the word may be

a euphemism for Hades, which is usually derived apo tou aeidous, because the God is concerned with the

invisible. But the name Hades was really given him from his knowing (eidenai) all good things. Men in

general are foolishly afraid of him, and talk with horror of the world below from which no one may return.

The reason why his subjects never wish to come back, even if they could, is that the God enchains them by

the strongest of spells, namely by the desire of virtue, which they hope to obtain by constant association with

him. He is the perfect and accomplished Sophist and the great benefactor of the other world; for he has much

more than he wants there, and hence he is called Pluto or the rich. He will have nothing to do with the souls

of men while in the body, because he cannot work his will with them so long as they are confused and

entangled by fleshly lusts. Demeter is the mother and giver of foode didousa meter tes edodes. Here is

erate tis, or perhaps the legislator may have been thinking of the weather, and has merely transposed the

letters of the word aer. Pherephatta, that word of awe, is pheretapha, which is only an euphonious contraction

of e tou pheromenou ephaptomene,all things are in motion, and she in her wisdom moves with them, and

the wise God Hades consorts with herthere is nothing very terrible in this, any more than in the her other

appellation Persephone, which is also significant of her wisdom (sophe). Apollo is another name, which is

supposed to have some dreadful meaning, but is susceptible of at least four perfectly innocent explanations.

First, he is the purifier or purger or absolver (apolouon); secondly, he is the true diviner, Aplos, as he is called

in the Thessalian dialect (aplos = aplous, sincere); thirdly, he is the archer (aei ballon), always shooting; or

again, supposing alpha to mean ama or omou, Apollo becomes equivalent to ama polon, which points to both

his musical and his heavenly attributes; for there is a 'moving together' alike in music and in the harmony of

the spheres. The second lambda is inserted in order to avoid the illomened sound of destruction. The Muses

are so calledapo tou mosthai. The gentle Leto or Letho is named from her willingness (ethelemon), or

because she is ready to forgive and forget (lethe). Artemis is so called from her healthy wellbalanced nature,

dia to artemes, or as aretes istor; or as a lover of virginity, aroton misesasa. One of these explanations is

probably true,perhaps all of them. Dionysus is o didous ton oinon, and oinos is quasi oionous because wine

makes those think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (nous) who have none. The established derivation of

Aphrodite dia ten tou athrou genesin may be accepted on the authority of Hesiod. Again, there is the name of

Pallas, or Athene, which we, who are Athenians, must not forget. Pallas is derived from armed dancesapo

tou pallein ta opla. For Athene we must turn to the allegorical interpreters of Homer, who make the name

equivalent to theonoe, or possibly the word was originally ethonoe and signified moral intelligence (en ethei

noesis). Hephaestus, again, is the lord of lighto tou phaeos istor. This is a good notion; and, to prevent any

other getting into our heads, let us go on to Ares. He is the manly one (arren), or the unchangeable one

(arratos). Enough of the Gods; for, by the Gods, I am afraid of them; but if you suggest other words, you will

see how the horses of Euthyphro prance. 'Only one more God; tell me about my godfather Hermes.' He is

ermeneus, the messenger or cheater or thief or bargainer; or o eirein momenos, that is, eiremes or ermesthe

speaker or contriver of speeches. 'Well said Cratylus, then, that I am no son of Hermes.' Pan, as the son of

Hermes, is speech or the brother of speech, and is called Pan because speech indicates everythingo pan

menuon. He has two forms, a true and a false; and is in the upper part smooth, and in the lower part shaggy.

'Will you go on to the elementssun, moon, stars, earth, aether, air, fire, water, seasons, years?' Very good:

and which shall I take first? Let us begin with elios, or the sun. The Doric form elios helps us to see that he is

so called because at his rising he gathers (alizei) men together, or because he rolls about (eilei) the earth, or

because he variegates (aiolei = poikillei) the earth. Selene is an anticipation of Anaxagoras, being a

contraction of selaenoneoaeia, the light (selas) which is ever old and new, and which, as Anaxagoras says, is

borrowed from the sun; the name was harmonized into selanaia, a form which is still in use. 'That is a true

dithyrambic name.' Meis is so called apo tou meiousthai, from suffering diminution, and astron is from

astrape (lightning), which is an improvement of anastrope, that which turns the eyes inside out. 'How do you

explain pur n udor?' I suspect that pur, which, like udor n kuon, is found in Phrygian, is a foreign word; for

the Hellenes have borrowed much from the barbarians, and I always resort to this theory of a foreign origin

when I am at a loss. Aer may be explained, oti airei ta apo tes ges; or, oti aei rei; or, oti pneuma ex autou

ginetai (compare the poetic word aetai). So aither quasi aeitheer oti aei thei peri ton aera: ge, gaia quasi

genneteira (compare the Homeric form gegaasi); ora (with an omega), or, according to the old Attic form ora

(with an omicron), is derived apo tou orizein, because it divides the year; eniautos and etos are the same

thoughto en eauto etazon, cut into two parts, en eauto and etazon, like di on ze into Dios and Zenos.

'You make surprising progress.' True; I am run away with, and am not even yet at my utmost speed. 'I should

like very much to hear your account of the virtues. What principle of correctness is there in those charming

words, wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest?' To explain all that will be a serious business; still, as I

have put on the lion's skin, appearances must be maintained. My opinion is, that primitive men were like

some modern philosophers, who, by always going round in their search after the nature of things, become

dizzy; and this phenomenon, which was really in themselves, they imagined to take place in the external

world. You have no doubt remarked, that the doctrine of the universal flux, or generation of things, is

indicated in names. 'No, I never did.' Phronesis is only phoras kai rou noesis, or perhaps phoras onesis, and in

any case is connected with pheresthai; gnome is gones skepsis kai nomesis; noesis is neou or gignomenon

esis; the word neos implies that creation is always going onthe original form was neoesis; sophrosune is

soteria phroneseos; episteme is e epomene tois pragmasinthe faculty which keeps close, neither

anticipating nor lagging behind; sunesis is equivalent to sunienai, sumporeuesthai ten psuche, and is a kind of

conclusionsullogismos tis, akin therefore in idea to episteme; sophia is very difficult, and has a foreign

lookthe meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things, and may be illustrated by the poetical esuthe

and the Lacedaemonian proper name Sous, or Rush; agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,for all things are

in motion, and some are swifter than others: dikaiosune is clearly e tou dikaiou sunesis. The word dikaion is

more troublesome, and appears to mean the subtle penetrating power which, as the lovers of motion say,

preserves all things, and is the cause of all things, quasi diaion going throughthe letter kappa being inserted

for the sake of euphony. This is a great mystery which has been confided to me; but when I ask for an

explanation I am thought obtrusive, and another derivation is proposed to me. Justice is said to be o kaion, or

the sun; and when I joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered, 'What, is there no justice when the

sun is down?' And when I entreat my questioner to tell me his own opinion, he replies, that justice is fire in

the abstract, or heat in the abstract; which is not very intelligible. Others laugh at such notions, and say with

Anaxagoras, that justice is the ordering mind. 'I think that some one must have told you this.' And not the

rest? Let me proceed then, in the hope of proving to you my originality. Andreia is quasi anpeia quasi e ano

roe, the stream which flows upwards, and is opposed to injustice, which clearly hinders the principle of

penetration; arren and aner have a similar derivation; gune is the same as gone; thelu is derived apo tes theles,

because the teat makes things flourish (tethelenai), and the word thallein itself implies increase of youth,

which is swift and sudden ever (thein and allesthai). I am getting over the ground fast: but much has still to be

explained. There is techne, for instance. This, by an aphaeresis of tau and an epenthesis of omicron in two

'A very poor etymology.' Yes; but you must remember that all language is in process of change; letters are

taken in and put out for the sake of euphony, and time is also a great alterer of words. For example, what

business has the letter rho in the word katoptron, or the letter sigma in the word sphigx? The additions are

often such that it is impossible to make out the original word; and yet, if you may put in and pull out, as you

like, any name is equally good for any object. The fact is, that great dictators of literature like yourself should

observe the rules of moderation. 'I will do my best.' But do not be too much of a precisian, or you will

paralyze me. If you will let me add mechane, apo tou mekous, which means polu, and anein, I shall be at the

summit of my powers, from which elevation I will examine the two words kakia and arete. The first is easily

explained in accordance with what has preceded; for all things being in a flux, kakia is to kakos ion. This

derivation is illustrated by the word deilia, which ought to have come after andreia, and may be regarded as o

lian desmos tes psuches, just as aporia signifies an impediment to motion (from alpha not, and poreuesthai to

go), and arete is euporia, which is the opposite of thisthe everflowing (aei reousa or aeireite), or the

eligible, quasi airete. You will think that I am inventing, but I say that if kakia is right, then arete is also right.

But what is kakon? That is a very obscure word, to which I can only apply my old notion and declare that

kakon is a foreign word. Next, let us proceed to kalon, aischron. The latter is doubtless contracted from

aeischoroun, quasi aei ischon roun. The inventor of words being a patron of the flux, was a great enemy to

stagnation. Kalon is to kaloun ta pragmatathis is mind (nous or dianoia); which is also the principle of

beauty; and which doing the works of beauty, is therefore rightly called the beautiful. The meaning of

sumpheron is explained by previous examples;like episteme, signifying that the soul moves in harmony

with the world (sumphora, sumpheronta). Kerdos is to pasi kerannumenonthat which mingles with all

things: lusiteloun is equivalent to to tes phoras luon to telos, and is not to be taken in the vulgar sense of

gainful, but rather in that of swift, being the principle which makes motion immortal and unceasing;

ophelimon is apo tou ophelleinthat which gives increase: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin.

Blaberon is to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou that which injures or seeks to bind the stream. The

proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too much of a mouthfullike a prelude on the flute in honour

of Athene. The word zemiodes is difficult; great changes, as I was saying, have been made in words, and

even a small change will alter their meaning very much. The word deon is one of these disguised words. You

know that according to the old pronunciation, which is especially affected by the women, who are great

conservatives, iota and delta were used where we should now use eta and zeta: for example, what we now call

emera was formerly called imera; and this shows the meaning of the word to have been 'the desired one

coming after night,' and not, as is often supposed, 'that which makes things gentle' (emera). So again, zugon is

duogon, quasi desis duein eis agogen(the binding of two together for the purpose of drawing. Deon, as

ordinarily written, has an evil sense, signifying the chain (desmos) or hindrance of motion; but in its ancient

form dion is expressive of good, quasi diion, that which penetrates or goes through all. Zemiodes is really

demiodes, and means that which binds motion (dounti to ion): edone is e pros ten onrsin teinousa praxisthe

delta is an insertion: lupe is derived apo tes dialuseos tou somatos: ania is from alpha and ienai, to go:

algedon is a foreign word, and is so called apo tou algeinou: odune is apo tes enduseos tes lupes: achthedon is

in its very sound a burden: chapa expresses the flow of soul: terpsis is apo tou terpnou, and terpnon is

properly erpnon, because the sensation of pleasure is likened to a breath (pnoe) which creeps (erpei) through

the soul: euphrosune is named from pheresthai, because the soul moves in harmony with nature: epithumia is

e epi ton thumon iousa dunamis: thumos is apo tes thuseos tes psuches: imerosoti eimenos pei e psuche:

pothos, the desire which is in another place, allothi pou: eros was anciently esros, and so called because it

flows into (esrei) the soul from without: doxa is e dioxis tou eidenai, or expresses the shooting from a bow

(toxon). The latter etymology is confirmed by the words boulesthai, boule, aboulia, which all have to do with

shooting (bole): and similarly oiesis is nothing but the movement (oisis) of the soul towards essence.

Ekousion is to eikonthe yieldinganagke is e an agke iousa, the passage through ravines which impede

motion: aletheia is theia ale, divine motion. Pseudos is the opposite of this, implying the principle of

constraint and forced repose, which is expressed under the figure of sleep, to eudon; the psi is an addition.

Onoma, a name, affirms the real existence of that which is sought afteron ou masma estin. On and ousia

are only ion with an iota broken off; and ouk on is ouk ion. 'And what are ion, reon, doun?' One way of

explaining them has been already suggestedthey may be of foreign origin; and possibly this is the true

answer. But mere antiquity may often prevent our recognizing words, after all the complications which they

have undergone; and we must remember that however far we carry back our analysis some ultimate elements

or roots will remain which can be no further analyzed. For example; the word agathos was supposed by us to

be a compound of agastos and thoos, and probably thoos may be further resolvable. But if we take a word of

which no further resolution seems attainable, we may fairly conclude that we have reached one of these

original elements, and the truth of such a word must be tested by some new method. Will you help me in the

All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature of things; and the secondary, as I

conceive, derive their significance from the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything?

And let me ask another question,If we had no faculty of speech, how should we communicate with one

another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean

lightnessheaviness would be expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be

described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only express anything by imitation; and

the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the body. But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not

yet a name, because people may imitate sheep or goats without naming them. What, then, is a name? In the

first place, a name is not a musical, or, secondly, a pictorial imitation, but an imitation of that kind which

expresses the nature of a thing; and is the invention not of a musician, or of a painter, but of a namer.

And now, I think that we may consider the names about which you were asking. The way to analyze them

will be by going back to the letters, or primary elements of which they are composed. First, we separate the

alphabet into classes of letters, distinguishing the consonants, mutes, vowels, and semivowels; and when we

have learnt them singly, we shall learn to know them in their various combinations of two or more letters; just

as the painter knows how to use either a single colour, or a combination of colours. And like the painter, we

may apply letters to the expression of objects, and form them into syllables; and these again into words, until

the picture or figurethat is, languageis completed. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I

mean to say that this was the way in which the ancients framed language. And this leads me to consider

whether the primary as well as the secondary elements are rightly given. I may remark, as I was saying about

the Gods, that we can only attain to conjecture of them. But still we insist that ours is the true and only

method of discovery; otherwise we must have recourse, like the tragic poets, to a Deus ex machina, and say

that God gave the first names, and therefore they are right; or that the barbarians are older than we are, and

that we learnt of them; or that antiquity has cast a veil over the truth. Yet all these are not reasons; they are

I will freely impart to you my own notions, though they are somewhat crude:the letter rho appears to me to

be the general instrument which the legislator has employed to express all motion or kinesis. (I ought to

explain that kinesis is just iesis (going), for the letter eta was unknown to the ancients; and the root, kiein, is a

foreign form of ienai: of kinesis or eisis, the opposite is stasis). This use of rho is evident in the words

tremble, break, crush, crumble, and the like; the imposer of names perceived that the tongue is most agitated

in the pronunciation of this letter, just as he used iota to express the subtle power which penetrates through all

things. The letters phi, psi, sigma, zeta, which require a great deal of wind, are employed in the imitation of

such notions as shivering, seething, shaking, and in general of what is windy. The letters delta and tau convey

the idea of binding and rest in a place: the lambda denotes smoothness, as in the words slip, sleek, sleep, and

the like. But when the slipping tongue is detained by the heavier sound of gamma, then arises the notion of a

glutinous clammy nature: nu is sounded from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha is the expression

of size; eta of length; omicron of roundness, and therefore there is plenty of omicron in the word goggulon.

That is my view, Hermogenes, of the correctness of names; and I should like to hear what Cratylus would

say. 'But, Socrates, as I was telling you, Cratylus mystifies me; I should like to ask him, in your presence,

what he means by the fitness of names?' To this appeal, Cratylus replies 'that he cannot explain so important a

subject all in a moment.' 'No, but you may "add little to little," as Hesiod says.' Socrates here interposes his

own request, that Cratylus will give some account of his theory. Hermogenes and himself are mere sciolists,

but Cratylus has reflected on these matters, and has had teachers. Cratylus replies in the words of Achilles:

'"Illustrious Ajax, you have spoken in all things much to my mind," whether Euthyphro, or some Muse

inhabiting your own breast, was the inspirer.' Socrates replies, that he is afraid of being selfdeceived, and

therefore he must 'look fore and aft,' as Homer remarks. Does not Cratylus agree with him that names teach

us the nature of things? 'Yes.' And naming is an art, and the artists are legislators, and like artists in general,

some of them are better and some of them are worse than others, and give better or worse laws, and make

better or worse names. Cratylus cannot admit that one name is better than another; they are either true names,

or they are not names at all; and when he is asked about the name of Hermogenes, who is acknowledged to

have no luck in him, he affirms this to be the name of somebody else. Socrates supposes him to mean that

falsehood is impossible, to which his own answer would be, that there has never been a lack of liars. Cratylus

presses him with the old sophistical argument, that falsehood is saying that which is not, and therefore saying

nothing;you cannot utter the word which is not. Socrates complains that this argument is too subtle for an

old man to understand: Suppose a person addressing Cratylus were to say, Hail, Athenian Stranger,

Hermogenes! would these words be true or false? 'I should say that they would be mere unmeaning sounds,

like the hammering of a brass pot.' But you would acknowledge that names, as well as pictures, are

imitations, and also that pictures may give a right or wrong representation of a man or woman:why may

not names then equally give a representation true and right or false and wrong? Cratylus admits that pictures

may give a true or false representation, but denies that names can. Socrates argues, that he may go up to a

man and say 'this is year picture,' and again, he may go and say to him 'this is your name'in the one case

appealing to his sense of sight, and in the other to his sense of hearing;may he not? 'Yes.' Then you will

admit that there is a right or a wrong assignment of names, and if of names, then of verbs and nouns; and if of

verbs and nouns, then of the sentences which are made up of them; and comparing nouns to pictures, you

may give them all the appropriate sounds, or only some of them. And as he who gives all the colours makes a

good picture, and he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but still a picture; so he who gives

all the sounds makes a good name, and he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but a name

still. The artist of names, that is, the legislator, may be a good or he may be a bad artist. 'Yes, Socrates, but

the cases are not parallel; for if you subtract or misplace a letter, the name ceases to be a name.' Socrates

admits that the number 10, if an unit is subtracted, would cease to be 10, but denies that names are of this

purely quantitative nature. Suppose that there are two objectsCratylus and the image of Cratylus; and let us

imagine that some God makes them perfectly alike, both in their outward form and in their inner nature and

qualities: then there will be two Cratyluses, and not merely Cratylus and the image of Cratylus. But an image

in fact always falls short in some degree of the original, and if images are not exact counterparts, why should

names be? if they were, they would be the doubles of their originals, and indistinguishable from them; and

how ridiculous would this be! Cratylus admits the truth of Socrates' remark. But then Socrates rejoins, he

should have the courage to acknowledge that letters may be wrongly inserted in a noun, or a noun in a

sentence; and yet the noun or the sentence may retain a meaning. Better to admit this, that we may not be

punished like the traveller in Egina who goes about at night, and that Truth herself may not say to us, 'Too

late.' And, errors excepted, we may still affirm that a name to be correct must have proper letters, which bear

a resemblance to the thing signified. I must remind you of what Hermogenes and I were saying about the

letter rho accent, which was held to be expressive of motion and hardness, as lambda is of smoothness;and

this you will admit to be their natural meaning. But then, why do the Eritreans call that skleroter which we

call sklerotes? We can understand one another, although the letter rho accent is not equivalent to the letter s:

why is this? You reply, because the two letters are sufficiently alike for the purpose of expressing motion.

Well, then, there is the letter lambda; what business has this in a word meaning hardness? 'Why, Socrates, I

retort upon you, that we put in and pull out letters at pleasure.' And the explanation of this is custom or

agreement: we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s and a convention may indicate by the unlike

as well as by the like. How could there be names for all the numbers unless you allow that convention is

used? Imitation is a poor thing, and has to be supplemented by convention, which is another poor thing;

although I agree with you in thinking that the most perfect form of language is found only where there is a

perfect correspondence of sound and meaning. But let me ask you what is the use and force of names? 'The

use of names, Socrates, is to inform, and he who knows names knows things.' Do you mean that the

discovery of names is the same as the discovery of things? 'Yes.' But do you not see that there is a degree of

deception about names? He who first gave names, gave them according to his conception, and that may have

been erroneous. 'But then, why, Socrates, is language so consistent? all words have the same laws.' Mere

consistency is no test of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, there may be a flaw at the beginning,

and yet the conclusion may follow consistently. And, therefore, a wise man will take especial care of first

principles. But are words really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise which signify rest as which

signify motion? There is episteme, which is connected with stasis, as mneme is with meno. Bebaion, again, is

the expression of station and position; istoria is clearly descriptive of the stopping istanai of the stream;

piston indicates the cessation of motion; and there are many words having a bad sense, which are connected

with ideas of motion, such as sumphora, amartia, etc.: amathia, again, might be explained, as e ama theo

iontos poreia, and akolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the bad names are framed on the same

principle as the good, and other examples might be given, which would favour a theory of rest rather than of

motion. 'Yes; but the greater number of words express motion.' Are we to count them, Cratylus; and is

Here is another point: we were saying that the legislator gives names; and therefore we must suppose that he

knows the things which he names: but how can he have learnt things from names before there were any

names? 'I believe, Socrates, that some power more than human first gave things their names, and that these

were necessarily true names.' Then how came the giver of names to contradict himself, and to make some

names expressive of rest, and others of motion? 'I do not suppose that he did make them both.' Then which

did he makethose which are expressive of rest, or those which are expressive of motion?...But if some

names are true and others false, we can only decide between them, not by counting words, but by appealing

to things. And, if so, we must allow that things may be known without names; for names, as we have several

times admitted, are the images of things; and the higher knowledge is of things, and is not to be derived from

names; and though I do not doubt that the inventors of language gave names, under the idea that all things are

in a state of motion and flux, I believe that they were mistaken; and that having fallen into a whirlpool

themselves, they are trying to drag us after them. For is there not a true beauty and a true good, which is

always beautiful and always good? Can the thing beauty be vanishing away from us while the words are yet

in our mouths? And they could not be known by any one if they are always passing awayfor if they are

always passing away, the observer has no opportunity of observing their state. Whether the doctrine of the

flux or of the eternal nature be the truer, is hard to determine. But no man of sense will put himself, or the

education of his mind, in the power of names: he will not condemn himself to be an unreal thing, nor will he

believe that everything is in a flux like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world is a man who has a

running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I

would have you reflect while you are young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me. 'I

have thought, Socrates, and after a good deal of thinking I incline to Heracleitus.' Then another day, my

friend, you shall give me a lesson. 'Very good, Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study these

We may now consider (I) how far Plato in the Cratylus has discovered the true principles of language, and

then (II) proceed to compare modern speculations respecting the origin and nature of language with the

I. (1) Plato is aware that language is not the work of chance; nor does he deny that there is a natural fitness in

names. He only insists that this natural fitness shall be intelligibly explained. But he has no idea that language

is a natural organism. He would have heard with surprise that languages are the common work of whole

nations in a primitive or semi barbarous age. How, he would probably have argued, could men devoid of art

have contrived a structure of such complexity? No answer could have been given to this question, either in

ancient or in modern times, until the nature of primitive antiquity had been thoroughly studied, and the

instincts of man had been shown to exist in greater force, when his state approaches more nearly to that of

children or animals. The philosophers of the last century, after their manner, would have vainly endeavoured

to trace the process by which proper names were converted into common, and would have shown how the last

effort of abstraction invented prepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved that language

must have had a divine origin, because in childhood, while the organs are pliable, the intelligence is wanting,

and when the intelligence is able to frame conceptions, the organs are no longer able to express them. Or, as

others have said: Man is man because he has the gift of speech; and he could not have invented that which he

is. But this would have been an 'argument too subtle' for Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the

origin of language 'as an excuse for not giving a reason,' which he compares to the introduction of the 'Deus

ex machina' by the tragic poets when they have to solve a difficulty; thus anticipating many modern

controversies in which the primary agency of the divine Being is confused with the secondary cause; and God

is assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a lacuna in human knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)

Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art enters into language. The creative

power abating is supplemented by a mechanical process. 'Languages are not made but grow,' but they are

made as well as grow; bursting into life like a plant or a flower, they are also capable of being trained and

improved and engrafted upon one another. The change in them is effected in earlier ages by musical and

euphonic improvements, at a later stage by the influence of grammar and logic, and by the poetical and

literary use of words. They develope rapidly in childhood, and when they are full grown and set they may still

put forth intellectual powers, like the mind in the body, or rather we may say that the nobler use of language

only begins when the framework is complete. The savage or primitive man, in whom the natural instinct is

strongest, is also the greatest improver of the forms of language. He is the poet or maker of words, as in

civilised ages the dialectician is the definer or distinguisher of them. The latter calls the second world of

abstract terms into existence, as the former has created the picture sounds which represent natural objects or

processes. Poetry and philosophythese two, are the two great formative principles of language, when they

have passed their first stage, of which, as of the first invention of the arts in general, we only entertain

conjecture. And mythology is a link between them, connecting the visible and invisible, until at length the

sensuous exterior falls away, and the severance of the inner and outer world, of the idea and the object of

sense, becomes complete. At a later period, logic and grammar, sister arts, preserve and enlarge the decaying

instinct of language, by rule and method, which they gather from analysis and observation.

(2) There is no trace in any of Plato's writings that he was acquainted with any language but Greek. Yet he

has conceived very truly the relation of Greek to foreign languages, which he is led to consider, because he

finds that many Greek words are incapable of explanation. Allowing a good deal for accident, and also for the

fancies of the conditores linguae Graecae, there is an element of which he is unable to give an account. These

unintelligible words he supposes to be of foreign origin, and to have been derived from a time when the

Greeks were either barbarians, or in close relations to the barbarians. Socrates is aware that this principle is

liable to great abuse; and, like the 'Deus ex machina,' explains nothing. Hence he excuses himself for the

employment of such a device, and remarks that in foreign words there is still a principle of correctness, which

(3) But the greater number of primary words do not admit of derivation from foreign languages; they must be

resolved into the letters out of which they are composed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning. The

framers of language were aware of this; they observed that alpha was adapted to express size; eta length;

omicron roundness; nu inwardness; rho accent rush or roar; lambda liquidity; gamma lambda the detention of

the liquid or slippery element; delta and tau binding; phi, psi, sigma, xi, wind and cold, and so on. Plato's

analysis of the letters of the alphabet shows a wonderful insight into the nature of language. He does not

expressively distinguish between mere imitation and the symbolical use of sound to express thought, but he

recognises in the examples which he gives both modes of imitation. Gesture is the mode which a deaf and

dumb person would take of indicating his meaning. And language is the gesture of the tongue; in the use of

the letter rho accent, to express a rushing or roaring, or of omicron to express roundness, there is a direct

imitation; while in the use of the letter alpha to express size, or of eta to express length, the imitation is

symbolical. The use of analogous or similar sounds, in order to express similar analogous ideas, seems to

In passing from the gesture of the body to the movement of the tongue, Plato makes a great step in the

physiology of language. He was probably the first who said that 'language is imitative sound,' which is the

greatest and deepest truth of philology; although he is not aware of the laws of euphony and association by

which imitation must be regulated. He was probably also the first who made a distinction between simple and

compound words, a truth second only in importance to that which has just been mentioned. His great insight

in one direction curiously contrasts with his blindness in another; for he appears to be wholly unaware

(compare his derivation of agathos from agastos and thoos) of the difference between the root and

termination. But we must recollect that he was necessarily more ignorant than any schoolboy of Greek

grammar, and had no table of the inflexions of verbs and nouns before his eyes, which might have suggested

(4) Plato distinctly affirms that language is not truth, or 'philosophie une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates

has delighted himself with discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly satirising the

pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous

inference which might be gathered from his experiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many, words

expressive of rest, as he had previously found expressive of motion. And even if this had been otherwise, who

would learn of words when he might learn of things? There is a great controversy and high argument between

Heracleiteans and Eleatics, but no man of sense would commit his soul in such enquiries to the imposers of

names...In this and other passages Plato shows that he is as completely emancipated from the influence of

The lesson which may be gathered from words is not metaphysical or moral, but historical. They teach us the

affinity of races, they tell us something about the association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the memory

of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom

and necessity, or the other problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on such

subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other languages, and may have no relation to

the contemporary state of thought and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of

philosophical reflection; they have been commonly transferred from matter to mind, and their meaning is the

very reverse of their etymology. Because there is or is not a name for a thing, we cannot argue that the thing

has or has not an actual existence; or that the antitheses, parallels, conjugates, correlatives of language have

anything corresponding to them in nature. There are too many words as well as too few; and they generalize

the objects or ideas which they represent. The greatest lesson which the philosophical analysis of language

teaches us is, that we should be above language, making words our servants, and not allowing them to be our

Plato does not add the further observation, that the etymological meaning of words is in process of being lost.

If at first framed on a principle of intelligibility, they would gradually cease to be intelligible, like those of a

foreign language, he is willing to admit that they are subject to many changes, and put on many disguises. He

acknowledges that the 'poor creature' imitation is supplemented by another 'poor creature,' convention. But

he does not see that 'habit and repute,' and their relation to other words, are always exercising an influence

over them. Words appear to be isolated, but they are really the parts of an organism which is always being

reproduced. They are refined by civilization, harmonized by poetry, emphasized by literature, technically

applied in philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the borderground of human knowledge; they

receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every

livelyminded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of millions, and yet are always

imperceptibly changing;not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great

writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespear, Dante, the German or English

Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of them in later ages. They carry with them the faded recollection of

their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage gives a complexion to its use

everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. But these

and other subtleties of language escaped the observation of Plato. He is not aware that the languages of the

world are organic structures, and that every word in them is related to every other; nor does he conceive of

language as the joint work of the speaker and the hearer, requiring in man a faculty not only of expressing his

On the other hand, he cannot be justly charged with a desire to frame language on artificial principles.

Philosophers have sometimes dreamed of a technical or scientific language, in words which should have

fixed meanings, and stand in the same relation to one another as the substances which they denote. But there

is no more trace of this in Plato than there is of a language corresponding to the ideas; nor, indeed, could the

want of such a language be felt until the sciences were far more developed. Those who would extend the use

of technical phraseology beyond the limits of science or of custom, seem to forget that freedom and

suggestiveness and the play of association are essential characteristics of language. The great master has

shown how he regarded pedantic distinctions of words or attempts to confine their meaning in the satire on

(5) In addition to these anticipations of the general principles of philology, we may note also a few curious

observations on words and sounds. 'The Eretrians say sklerotes for skleroter;' 'the Thessalians call Apollo

Amlos;' 'The Phrygians have the words pur, udor, kunes slightly changed;' 'there is an old Homeric word

emesato, meaning "he contrived";' 'our forefathers, and especially the women, who are most conservative of

the ancient language, loved the letters iota and delta; but now iota is changed into eta and epsilon, and delta

into zeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.' Plato was very willing to use inductive

arguments, so far as they were within his reach; but he would also have assigned a large influence to chance.

Nor indeed is induction applicable to philology in the same degree as to most of the physical sciences. For

after we have pushed our researches to the furthest point, in language as in all the other creations of the

human mind, there will always remain an element of exception or accident or freewill, which cannot be

The question, 'whether falsehood is impossible,' which Socrates characteristically sets aside as too subtle for

an old man (compare Euthyd.), could only have arisen in an age of imperfect consciousness, which had not

yet learned to distinguish words from things. Socrates replies in effect that words have an independent

existence; thus anticipating the solution of the mediaeval controversy of Nominalism and Realism. He is

aware too that languages exist in various degrees of perfection, and that the analysis of them can only be

carried to a certain point. 'If we could always, or almost always, use likenesses, which are the appropriate

expressions, that would be the most perfect state of language.' These words suggest a question of deeper

interest than the origin of language; viz. what is the ideal of language, how far by any correction of their

usages existing languages might become clearer and more expressive than they are, more poetical, and also

more logical; or whether they are now finally fixed and have received their last impress from time and

On the whole, the Cratylus seems to contain deeper truths about language than any other ancient writing. But

feeling the uncertain ground upon which he is walking, and partly in order to preserve the character of

Socrates, Plato envelopes the whole subject in a robe of fancy, and allows his principles to drop out as if by

II. What is the result of recent speculations about the origin and nature of language? Like other modern

metaphysical enquiries, they end at last in a statement of facts. But, in order to state or understand the facts, a

metaphysical insight seems to be required. There are more things in language than the human mind easily

conceives. And many fallacies have to be dispelled, as well as observations made. The true spirit of

philosophy or metaphysics can alone charm away metaphysical illusions, which are always reappearing,

formerly in the fancies of neoplatonist writers, now in the disguise of experience and common sense. An

analogy, a figure of speech, an intelligible theory, a superficial observation of the individual, have often been

Speaking is one of the simplest natural operations, and also the most complex. Nothing would seem to be

easier or more trivial than a few words uttered by a child in any language. Yet into the formation of those

words have entered causes which the human mind is not capable of calculating. They are a drop or two of the

great stream or ocean of speech which has been flowing in all ages. They have been transmitted from one

language to another; like the child himself, they go back to the beginnings of the human race. How they

originated, who can tell? Nevertheless we can imagine a stage of human society in which the circle of men's

minds was narrower and their sympathies and instincts stronger; in which their organs of speech were more

flexible, and the sense of hearing finer and more discerning; in which they lived more in company, and after

the manner of children were more given to express their feelings; in which 'they moved all together,' like a

herd of wild animals, 'when they moved at all.' Among them, as in every society, a particular person would be

more sensitive and intelligent than the rest. Suddenly, on some occasion of interest (at the approach of a wild

beast, shall we say?), he first, they following him, utter a cry which resounds through the forest. The cry is

almost or quite involuntary, and may be an imitation of the roar of the animal. Thus far we have not speech,

but only the inarticulate expression of feeling or emotion in no respect differing from the cries of animals; for

they too call to one another and are answered. But now suppose that some one at a distance not only hears the

sound, but apprehends the meaning: or we may imagine that the cry is repeated to a member of the society

who had been absent; the others act the scene over again when he returns home in the evening. And so the cry

becomes a word. The hearer in turn gives back the word to the speaker, who is now aware that he has

acquired a new power. Many thousand times he exercises this power; like a child learning to talk, he repeats

the same cry again, and again he is answered; he tries experiments with a like result, and the speaker and the

hearer rejoice together in their newlydiscovered faculty. At first there would be few such cries, and little

danger of mistaking or confusing them. For the mind of primitive man had a narrow range of perceptions and

feelings; his senses were microscopic; twenty or thirty sounds or gestures would be enough for him, nor

would he have any difficulty in finding them. Naturally he broke out into speechlike the young infant he

laughed and babbled; but not until there were hearers as well as speakers did language begin. Not the

interjection or the vocal imitation of the object, but the interjection or the vocal imitation of the object

After a while the word gathers associations, and has an independent existence. The imitation of the lion's roar

calls up the fears and hopes of the chase, which are excited by his appearance. In the moment of hearing the

sound, without any appreciable interval, these and other latent experiences wake up in the mind of the hearer.

Not only does he receive an impression, but he brings previous knowledge to bear upon that impression.

Necessarily the pictorial image becomes less vivid, while the association of the nature and habits of the

animal is more distinctly perceived. The picture passes into a symbol, for there would be too many of them

and they would crowd the mind; the vocal imitation, too, is always in process of being lost and being

renewed, just as the picture is brought back again in the description of the poet. Words now can be used more

freely because there are more of them. What was once an involuntary expression becomes voluntary. Not

only can men utter a cry or call, but they can communicate and converse; they can not only use words, but

they can even play with them. The word is separated both from the object and from the mind; and slowly

Parallel with this mental process the articulation of sounds is gradually becoming perfected. The finer sense

detects the differences of them, and begins, first to agglomerate, then to distinguish them. Times, persons,

places, relations of all kinds, are expressed by modifications of them. The earliest parts of speech, as we may

call them by anticipation, like the first utterances of children, probably partook of the nature of interjections

and nouns; then came verbs; at length the whole sentence appeared, and rhythm and metre followed. Each

stage in the progress of language was accompanied by some corresponding stage in the mind and civilisation

of man. In time, when the family became a nation, the wild growth of dialects passed into a language. Then

arose poetry and literature. We can hardly realize to ourselves how much with each improvement of language

the powers of the human mind were enlarged; how the inner world took the place of outer; how the pictorial

or symbolical or analogical word was refined into a notion; how language, fair and large and free, was at last

So we may imagine the speech of man to have begun as with the cries of animals, or the stammering lips of

children, and to have attained by degrees the perfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying that

this or any other theory of language is proved by facts. It is not difficult to form an hypothesis which by a

series of imaginary transitions will bridge over the chasm which separates man from the animals. Differences

of kind may often be thus resolved into differences of degree. But we must not assume that we have in this

way discovered the true account of them. Through what struggles the harmonious use of the organs of speech

was acquired; to what extent the conditions of human life were different; how far the genius of individuals

may have contributed to the discovery of this as of the other arts, we cannot say: Only we seem to see that

language is as much the creation of the ear as of the tongue, and the expression of a movement stirring the

hearts not of one man only but of many, 'as the trees of the wood are stirred by the wind.' The theory is

consistent or not inconsistent with our own mental experience, and throws some degree of light upon a dark

In the later analysis of language, we trace the opposite and contrasted elements of the individual and nation,

of the past and present, of the inward and outward, of the subject and object, of the notional and relational, of

the root or unchanging part of the word and of the changing inflexion, if such a distinction be admitted, of the

vowel and the consonant, of quantity and accent, of speech and writing, of poetry and prose. We observe also

the reciprocal influence of sounds and conceptions on each other, like the connexion of body and mind; and

further remark that although the names of objects were originally proper names, as the grammarian or

logician might call them, yet at a later stage they become universal notions, which combine into particulars

and individuals, and are taken out of the first rude agglomeration of sounds that they may be replaced in a

higher and more logical order. We see that in the simplest sentences are contained grammar and logicthe

parts of speech, the Eleatic philosophy and the Kantian categories. So complex is language, and so expressive

not only of the meanest wants of man, but of his highest thoughts; so various are the aspects in which it is

regarded by us. Then again, when we follow the history of languages, we observe that they are always slowly

moving, half dead, half alive, half solid, half fluid; the breath of a moment, yet like the air, continuous in all

ages and countries,like the glacier, too, containing within them a trickling stream which deposits debris of

the rocks over which it passes. There were happy moments, as we may conjecture, in the lives of nations, at

which they came to the birthas in the golden age of literature, the man and the time seem to conspire; the

eloquence of the bard or chief, as in later times the creations of the great writer who is the expression of his

age, became impressed on the minds of their countrymen, perhaps in the hour of some crisis of national

developmenta migration, a conquest, or the like. The picture of the word which was beginning to be lost, is

now revived; the sound again echoes to the sense; men find themselves capable not only of expressing more

feelings, and describing more objects, but of expressing and describing them better. The world before the

flood, that is to say, the world of ten, twenty, a hundred thousand years ago, has passed away and left no sign.

But the best conception that we can form of it, though imperfect and uncertain, is gained from the analogy of

causes still in action, some powerful and sudden, others working slowly in the course of infinite ages.

Something too may be allowed to 'the persistency of the strongest,' to 'the survival of the fittest,' in this as in

These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of language suggests to us about the powers

of the human mind and the forces and influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were

inspired. Yet in making these and similar generalizations we may note also dangers to which we are exposed.

(1) There is the confusion of ideas with factsof mere possibilities, and generalities, and modes of

conception with actual and definite knowledge. The words 'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,' development,' 'instinct,'

'implicit,' 'explicit,' and the like, have a false clearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our

knowledge. The metaphor of a flower or a tree, or some other work of nature or art, is often in like manner

only a pleasing picture. (2) There is the fallacy of resolving the languages which we know into their parts,

and then imagining that we can discover the nature of language by reconstructing them. (3) There is the

danger of identifying language, not with thoughts but with ideas. (4) There is the error of supposing that the

analysis of grammar and logic has always existed, or that their distinctions were familiar to Socrates and

Plato. (5) There is the fallacy of exaggerating, and also of diminishing the interval which separates articulate

from inarticulate languagethe cries of animals from the speech of manthe instincts of animals from the

reason of man. (6) There is the danger which besets all enquiries into the early history of manof

interpreting the past by the present, and of substituting the definite and intelligible for the true but dim outline

The greatest light is thrown upon the nature of language by analogy. We have the analogy of the cries of

animals, of the songs of birds ('man, like the nightingale, is a singing bird, but is ever binding up thoughts

with musical notes'), of music, of children learning to speak, of barbarous nations in which the linguistic

instinct is still undecayed, of ourselves learning to think and speak a new language, of the deaf and dumb who

have words without sounds, of the various disorders of speech; and we have the aftergrowth of mythology,

which, like language, is an unconscious creation of the human mind. We can observe the social and collective

instincts of animals, and may remark how, when domesticated, they have the power of understanding but not

of speaking, while on the other hand, some birds which are comparatively devoid of intelligence, make a

nearer approach to articulate speech. We may note how in the animals there is a want of that sympathy with

one another which appears to be the soul of language. We can compare the use of speech with other mental

and bodily operations; for speech too is a kind of gesture, and in the child or savage accompanied with

gesture. We may observe that the child learns to speak, as he learns to walk or to eat, by a natural impulse;

yet in either case not without a power of imitation which is also natural to himhe is taught to read, but he

breaks forth spontaneously in speech. We can trace the impulse to bind together the world in ideas beginning

in the first efforts to speak and culminating in philosophy. But there remains an element which cannot be

explained, or even adequately described. We can understand how man creates or constructs consciously and

by design; and see, if we do not understand, how nature, by a law, calls into being an organised structure. But

the intermediate organism which stands between man and nature, which is the work of mind yet unconscious,

and in which mind and matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived to herself is really limited by all other

minds, is neither understood nor seen by us, and is with reluctance admitted to be a fact.

Language is an aspect of man, of nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought, the

meetingpoint of the physical and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected, present at

every moment to the individual, and yet having a sort of eternal or universal nature. When we analyze our

own mental processes, we find words everywhere in every degree of clearness and consistency, fading away

in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greater

distinctness and consecutiveness in speech, and a greater still in writing, taking the place of one another when

we try to become emancipated from their influence. For in all processes of the mind which are conscious we

are talking to ourselves; the attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,they are always reappearing

when we fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separate faculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to

which all our other powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the instrument is not

The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and of their actions as links in a chain of

causes and effects going back to the beginning of time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their own

individuality in the universal cause or nature. In like manner we might think of the words which we daily use,

as derived from the first speech of man, and of all the languages in the world, as the expressions or varieties

of a single force or life of language of which the thoughts of men are the accident. Such a conception enables

us to grasp the power and wonder of languages, and is very natural to the scientific philologist. For he, like

the metaphysician, believes in the reality of that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormous

influence which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like fixed ideas, have often governed the

world. But in such representations we attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little of an

effect,too much of an absolute, too little of a relative character,too much of an ideal, too little of a

Or again, we may frame a single abstract notion of language of which all existent languages may be supposed

to be the perversion. But we must not conceive that this logical figment had ever a real existence, or is

anything more than an effort of the mind to give unity to infinitely various phenomena. There is no abstract

language 'in rerum natura,' any more than there is an abstract tree, but only languages in various stages of

growth, maturity, and decay. Nor do other logical distinctions or even grammatical exactly correspond to the

facts of language; for they too are attempts to give unity and regularity to a subject which is partly irregular.

We find, however, that there are distinctions of another kind by which this vast field of language admits of

being mapped out. There is the distinction between biliteral and triliteral roots, and the various inflexions

which accompany them; between the mere mechanical cohesion of sounds or words, and the 'chemical'

combination of them into a new word; there is the distinction between languages which have had a free and

full development of their organisms, and languages which have been stunted in their growth,lamed in their

hands or feet, and never able to acquire afterwards the powers in which they are deficient; there is the

distinction between synthetical languages like Greek and Latin, which have retained their inflexions, and

analytical languages like English or French, which have lost them. Innumerable as are the languages and

dialects of mankind, there are comparatively few classes to which they can be referred.

Another road through this chaos is provided by the physiology of speech. The organs of language are the

same in all mankind, and are only capable of uttering a certain number of sounds. Every man has tongue,

teeth, lips, palate, throat, mouth, which he may close or open, and adapt in various ways; making, first,

vowels and consonants; and secondly, other classes of letters. The elements of all speech, like the elements of

the musical scale, are few and simple, though admitting of infinite gradations and combinations. Whatever

slight differences exist in the use or formation of these organs, owing to climate or the sense of euphony or

other causes, they are as nothing compared with their agreement. Here then is a real basis of unity in the

study of philology, unlike that imaginary abstract unity of which we were just now speaking.

Whether we regard language from the psychological, or historical, or physiological point of view, the

materials of our knowledge are inexhaustible. The comparisons of children learning to speak, of barbarous

nations, of musical notes, of the cries of animals, of the song of birds, increase our insight into the nature of

human speech. Many observations which would otherwise have escaped us are suggested by them. But they

do not explain why, in man and in man only, the speaker met with a response from the hearer, and the half

articulate sound gradually developed into Sanscrit and Greek. They hardly enable us to approach any nearer

the secret of the origin of language, which, like some of the other great secrets of nature,the origin of birth

and death, or of animal life, remains inviolable. That problem is indissolubly bound up with the origin of

man; and if we ever know more of the one, we may expect to know more of the other. (Compare W.

Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science

of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft.'

It is more than sixteen years since the preceding remarks were written, which with a few alterations have now

been reprinted. During the interval the progress of philology has been very great. More languages have been

compared; the inner structure of language has been laid bare; the relations of sounds have been more

accurately discriminated; the manner in which dialects affect or are affected by the literary or principal form

of a language is better understood. Many merely verbal questions have been eliminated; the remains of the

old traditional methods have died away. The study has passed from the metaphysical into an historical stage.

Grammar is no longer confused with language, nor the anatomy of words and sentences with their life and

use. Figures of speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed, have been stripped off; and we

see language more as it truly was. The immensity of the subject is gradually revealed to us, and the reign of

law becomes apparent. Yet the law is but partially seen; the traces of it are often lost in the distance. For

languages have a natural but not a perfect growth; like other creations of nature into which the will of man

enters, they are full of what we term accident and irregularity. And the difficulties of the subject become not

less, but greater, as we proceedit is one of those studies in which we seem to know less as we know more;

partly because we are no longer satisfied with the vague and superficial ideas of it which prevailed fifty years

ago; partly also because the remains of the languages with which we are acquainted always were, and if they

are still living, are, in a state of transition; and thirdly, because there are lacunae in our knowledge of them

which can never be filled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of them has been preserved. Yet the materials

at our disposal are far greater than any individual can use. Such are a few of the general reflections which the

(1) Language seems to be composite, but into its first elements the philologer has never been able to

penetrate. However far he goes back, he never arrives at the beginning; or rather, as in Geology or in

Astronomy, there is no beginning. He is too apt to suppose that by breaking up the existing forms of language

into their parts he will arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merely analyzing what never existed, or is

never known to have existed, except in a composite form. He may divide nouns and verbs into roots and

inflexions, but he has no evidence which will show that the omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi, though

analogous to ego, me, either became pronouns or were generated out of pronouns. To say that 'pronouns, like

ripe fruit, dropped out of verbs,' is a misleading figure of speech. Although all languages have some common

principles, there is no primitive form or forms of language known to us, or to be reasonably imagined, from

which they are all descended. No inference can be drawn from language, either for or against the unity of the

human race. Nor is there any proof that words were ever used without any relation to each other. Whatever

may be the meaning of a sentence or a word when applied to primitive language, it is probable that the

sentence is more akin to the original form than the word, and that the later stage of language is the result

rather of analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination of the two. Nor, again, are we sure that the

original process of learning to speak was the same in different places or among different races of men. It may

have been slower with some, quicker with others. Some tribes may have used shorter, others longer words or

cries: they may have been more or less inclined to agglutinate or to decompose them: they may have

modified them by the use of prefixes, suffixes, infixes; by the lengthening and strengthening of vowels or by

the shortening and weakening of them, by the condensation or rarefaction of consonants. But who gave to

language these primeval laws; or why one race has triliteral, another biliteral roots; or why in some members

of a group of languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languages resemble one another in certain

parts of their structure and differ in others; or why in one language there is a greater development of vowels,

in another of consonants, and the likeare questions of which we only 'entertain conjecture.' We must

remember the length of time that has elapsed since man first walked upon the earth, and that in this vast but

unknown period every variety of language may have been in process of formation and decay, many times

'ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin of government? Will not a man be

able to judge best from a point of view in which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to

ATHENIAN STRANGER: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view of time, and observe the

ATHENIAN STRANGER: Why, do you think that you can reckon the time which has elapsed since cities

ATHENIAN STRANGER: But you are quite sure that it must be vast and incalculable?

ATHENIAN STRANGER: And have there not been thousands and thousands of cities which have come into

being and perished during this period? And has not every place had endless forms of government, and been

'And if a person should conceive the tales of mythology to mean only that men thought the gods to be the first

essences of things, he would deem the reflection to have been inspired and would consider that, whereas

probably every art and part of wisdom had been DISCOVERED AND LOST MANY TIMES OVER, such

It can hardly be supposed that any traces of an original language still survive, any more than of the first huts

or buildings which were constructed by man. Nor are we at all certain of the relation, if any, in which the

greater families of languages stand to each other. The influence of individuals must always have been a

disturbing element. Like great writers in later times, there may have been many a barbaric genius who taught

the men of his tribe to sing or speak, showing them by example how to continue or divide their words,

charming their souls with rhythm and accent and intonation, finding in familiar objects the expression of their

confused fanciesto whom the whole of language might in truth be said to be a figure of speech. One person

may have introduced a new custom into the formation or pronunciation of a word; he may have been imitated

by others, and the custom, or form, or accent, or quantity, or rhyme which he introduced in a single word may

have become the type on which many other words or inflexions of words were framed, and may have quickly

ran through a whole language. For like the other gifts which nature has bestowed upon man, that of speech

has been conveyed to him through the medium, not of the many, but of the few, who were his

'lawgivers''the legislator with the dialectician standing on his right hand,' in Plato's striking image, who

formed the manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and behaviour, whose

gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively imitated by them,the 'king of men' who was their

priest, almost their God...But these are conjectures only: so little do we know of the origin of language that

(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or original language which it is time to leave

behind us. We no longer divide languages into synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity of structure to

be the safe or only guide to the affinities of them. We do not confuse the parts of speech with the categories

of Logic. Nor do we conceive languages any more than civilisations to be in a state of dissolution; they do

not easily pass away, but are far more tenacious of life than the tribes by whom they are spoken. 'Where two

or three are gathered together,' they survive. As in the human frame, as in the state, there is a principle of

renovation as well as of decay which is at work in all of them. Neither do we suppose them to be invented by

the wit of man. With few exceptions, e.g. technical words or words newly imported from a foreign language,

and the like, in which art has imitated nature, 'words are not made but grow.' Nor do we attribute to them a

supernatural origin. The law which regulates them is like the law which governs the circulation of the blood,

or the rising of the sap in trees; the action of it is uniform, but the result, which appears in the superficial

forms of men and animals or in the leaves of trees, is an endless profusion and variety. The laws of vegetation

are invariable, but no two plants, no two leaves of the forest are precisely the same. The laws of language are

invariable, but no two languages are alike, no two words have exactly the same meaning. No two sounds are

It would be well if there were a similar consensus about some other points which appear to be still in dispute.

Is language conscious or unconscious? In speaking or writing have we present to our minds the meaning or

the sound or the construction of the words which we are using?No more than the separate drops of water

with which we quench our thirst are present: the whole draught may be conscious, but not the minute

particles of which it is made up: So the whole sentence may be conscious, but the several words, syllables,

letters are not thought of separately when we are uttering them. Like other natural operations, the process of

speech, when most perfect, is least observed by us. We do not pause at each mouthful to dwell upon the taste

of it: nor has the speaker time to ask himself the comparative merits of different modes of expression while

he is uttering them. There are many things in the use of language which may be observed from without, but

which cannot be explained from within. Consciousness carries us but a little way in the investigation of the

mind; it is not the faculty of internal observation, but only the dim light which makes such observation

possible. What is supposed to be our consciousness of language is really only the analysis of it, and this

analysis admits of innumerable degrees. But would it not be better if this term, which is so misleading, and

yet has played so great a part in mental science, were either banished or used only with the distinct meaning

of 'attention to our own minds,' such as is called forth, not by familiar mental processes, but by the

interruption of them? Now in this sense we may truly say that we are not conscious of ordinary speech,

though we are commonly roused to attention by the misuse or mispronunciation of a word. Still less, even in

schools and academies, do we ever attempt to invent new words or to alter the meaning of old ones, except in

the case, mentioned above, of technical or borrowed words which are artificially made or imported because a

need of them is felt. Neither in our own nor in any other age has the conscious effort of reflection in man

contributed in an appreciable degree to the formation of language. 'Which of us by taking thought' can make

new words or constructions? Reflection is the least of the causes by which language is affected, and is likely

to have the least power, when the linguistic instinct is greatest, as in young children and in the infancy of

A kindred error is the separation of the phonetic from the mental element of language; they are really

inseparableno definite line can be drawn between them, any more than in any other common act of mind

and body. It is true that within certain limits we possess the power of varying sounds by opening and closing

the mouth, by touching the palate or the teeth with the tongue, by lengthening or shortening the vocal

instrument, by greater or less stress, by a higher or lower pitch of the voice, and we can substitute one note or

accent for another. But behind the organs of speech and their action there remains the informing mind, which

sets them in motion and works together with them. And behind the great structure of human speech and the

lesser varieties of language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also

the unknown or overruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety

in its infinitesimal minutenessboth equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology

is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize that, like all the sciences

which are concerned with man, it has a double aspect,inward and outward; and that the inward can only be

known through the outward. Neither need we raise the question whether the laws of language, like the other

laws of human action, admit of exceptions. The answer in all cases is the samethat the laws of nature are

uniform, though the consistency or continuity of them is not always perceptible to us. The superficial

appearances of language, as of nature, are irregular, but we do not therefore deny their deeper uniformity. The

comparison of the growth of language in the individual and in the nation cannot be wholly discarded, for

nations are made up of individuals. But in this, as in the other political sciences, we must distinguish between

collective and individual actions or processes, and not attribute to the one what belongs to the other. Again,

when we speak of the hereditary or paternity of a language, we must remember that the parents are alive as

well as the children, and that all the preceding generations survive (after a manner) in the latest form of it.

And when, for the purposes of comparison, we form into groups the roots or terminations of words, we

should not forget how casual is the manner in which their resemblances have arisenthey were not first

written down by a grammarian in the paradigms of a grammar and learned out of a book, but were due to

many chance attractions of sound or of meaning, or of both combined. So many cautions have to be borne in

mind, and so many first thoughts to be dismissed, before we can proceed safely in the path of philological

enquiry. It might be well sometimes to lay aside figures of speech, such as the 'root' and the 'branches,' the

'stem,' the 'strata' of Geology, the 'compounds' of Chemistry, 'the ripe fruit of pronouns dropping from verbs'

(see above), and the like, which are always interesting, but are apt to be delusive. Yet such figures of speech

are far nearer the truth than the theories which attribute the invention and improvement of language to the

conscious action of the human mind...Lastly, it is doubted by recent philologians whether climate can be

supposed to have exercised any influence worth speaking of on a language: such a view is said to be

'Natural selection' and the 'survival of the fittest' have been applied in the field of philology, as well as in the

other sciences which are concerned with animal and vegetable life. And a Darwinian school of philologists

has sprung up, who are sometimes accused of putting words in the place of things. It seems to be true, that

whether applied to language or to other branches of knowledge, the Darwinian theory, unless very precisely

defined, hardly escapes from being a truism. If by 'the natural selection' of words or meanings of words or by

the 'persistence and survival of the fittest' the maintainer of the theory intends to affirm nothing more than

thisthat the word 'fittest to survive' survives, he adds not much to the knowledge of language. But if he

means that the word or the meaning of the word or some portion of the word which comes into use or drops

out of use is selected or rejected on the ground of economy or parsimony or ease to the speaker or clearness

or euphony or expressiveness, or greater or less demand for it, or anything of this sort, he is affirming a

proposition which has several senses, and in none of these senses can be assisted to be uniformly true. For the

laws of language are precarious, and can only act uniformly when there is such frequency of intercourse

among neighbours as is sufficient to enforce them. And there are many reasons why a man should prefer his

own way of speaking to that of others, unless by so doing he becomes unintelligible. The struggle for

existence among words is not of that fierce and irresistible kind in which birds, beasts and fishes devour one

another, but of a milder sort, allowing one usage to be substituted for another, not by force, but by the

persuasion, or rather by the prevailing habit, of a majority. The favourite figure, in this, as in some other uses

of it, has tended rather to obscure than explain the subject to which it has been applied. Nor in any case can

the struggle for existence be deemed to be the sole or principal cause of changes in language, but only one

among many, and one of which we cannot easily measure the importance. There is a further objection which

may be urged equally against all applications of the Darwinian theory. As in animal life and likewise in

vegetable, so in languages, the process of change is said to be insensible: sounds, like animals, are supposed

to pass into one another by imperceptible gradation. But in both cases the newlycreated forms soon become

fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the intermediate links, and so the better half of the evidence of the

(3) Among the incumbrances or illusions of language may be reckoned many of the rules and traditions of

grammar, whether ancient grammar or the corrections of it which modern philology has introduced.

Grammar, like law, delights in definition: human speech, like human action, though very far from being a

mere chaos, is indefinite, admits of degrees, and is always in a state of change or transition. Grammar gives

an erroneous conception of language: for it reduces to a system that which is not a system. Its figures of

speech, pleonasms, ellipses, anacolutha, pros to semainomenon, and the like have no reality; they do not

either make conscious expressions more intelligible or show the way in which they have arisen; they are

chiefly designed to bring an earlier use of language into conformity with the later. Often they seem intended

only to remind us that great poets like Aeschylus or Sophocles or Pindar or a great prose writer like

Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable liberties with grammatical rules; it appears never to have

occurred to the inventors of them that these real 'conditores linguae Graecae' lived in an age before grammar,

when 'Greece also was living Greece.' It is the anatomy, not the physiology of language, which grammar

seeks to describe: into the idiom and higher life of words it does not enter. The ordinary Greek grammar

gives a complete paradigm of the verb, without suggesting that the double or treble forms of Perfects, Aorists,

etc. are hardly ever contemporaneous. It distinguishes Moods and Tenses, without observing how much of

the nature of one passes into the other. It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and Middle, but takes no

notice of the precarious existence and uncertain character of the last of the three. Language is a thing of

degrees and relations and associations and exceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed rules. Language has many

varieties of usage: grammar tries to reduce them to a single one. Grammar divides verbs into regular and

irregular: it does not recognize that the irregular, equally with the regular, are subject to law, and that a

language which had no exceptions would not be a natural growth: for it could not have been subjected to the

influences by which language is ordinarily affected. It is always wanting to describe ancient languages in the

terms of a modern one. It has a favourite fiction that one word is put in the place of another; the truth is that

no word is ever put for another. It has another fiction, that a word has been omitted: words are omitted

because they are no longer needed; and the omission has ceased to be observed. The common explanation of

kata or some other preposition 'being understood' in a Greek sentence is another fiction of the same kind,

which tends to disguise the fact that under cases were comprehended originally many more relations, and that

prepositions are used only to define the meaning of them with greater precision. These instances are sufficient

to show the sort of errors which grammar introduces into language. We are not considering the question of its

utility to the beginner in the study. Even to him the best grammar is the shortest and that in which he will

have least to unlearn. It may be said that the explanations here referred to are already out of date, and that the

study of Greek grammar has received a new character from comparative philology. This is true; but it is also

true that the traditional grammar has still a great hold on the mind of the student.

Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar, because they wear the appearance of

philosophy and there is no test to which they can be subjected. They are useful in so far as they give us an

insight into the history of the human mind and the modes of thought which have existed in former ages; or in

so far as they furnish wider conceptions of the different branches of knowledge and of their relation to one

another. But they are worse than useless when they outrun experience and abstract the mind from the

observation of facts, only to envelope it in a mist of words. Some philologers, like Schleicher, have been

greatly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel; nearly all of them to a certain extent have fallen under the

dominion of physical science. Even Kant himself thought that the first principles of philosophy could be

elicited from the analysis of the proposition, in this respect falling short of Plato. Westphal holds that there

are three stages of language: (1) in which things were characterized independently, (2) in which they were

regarded in relation to human thought, and (3) in relation to one another. But are not such distinctions an

anachronism? for they imply a growth of abstract ideas which never existed in early times. Language cannot

be explained by Metaphysics; for it is prior to them and much more nearly allied to sense. It is not likely that

the meaning of the cases is ultimately resolvable into relations of space and time. Nor can we suppose the

conception of cause and effect or of the finite and infinite or of the same and other to be latent in language at

a time when in their abstract form they had never entered into the mind of man...If the science of

Comparative Philology had possessed 'enough of Metaphysics to get rid of Metaphysics,' it would have made

(4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are fully developed. They are of

several patterns; and these become altered by admixture in various degrees,they may only borrow a few

words from one another and retain their life comparatively unaltered, or they may meet in a struggle for

existence until one of the two is overpowered and retires from the field. They attain the full rights and dignity

of language when they acquire the use of writing and have a literature of their own; they pass into dialects

and grow out of them, in proportion as men are isolated or united by locality or occupation. The common

language sometimes reacts upon the dialects and imparts to them also a literary character. The laws of

language can be best discerned in the great crises of language, especially in the transitions from ancient to

modern forms of them, whether in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the silent notes of the world's history;

they mark periods of unknown length in which war and conquest were running riot over whole continents,

times of suffering too great to be endured by the human race, in which the masters became subjects and the

subject races masters, in which driven by necessity or impelled by some instinct, tribes or nations left their

original homes and but slowly found a restingplace. Language would be the greatest of all historical

(5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The simplest of all is to observe our own use

of language in conversation or in writing, how we put words together, how we construct and connect

sentences, what are the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and composition of words,

the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of letters, the mistakes to which we are ourselves most liable of

spelling or pronunciation. We may compare with our own language some other, even when we have only a

slight knowledge of it, such as French or German. Even a little Latin will enable us to appreciate the grand

difference between ancient and modern European languages. In the child learning to speak we may note the

inherent strength of language, which like 'a mountain river' is always forcing its way out. We may witness the

delight in imitation and repetition, and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We may

learn something also from the falterings of old age, the searching for words, and the confusion of them with

one another, the forgetfulness of proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more

isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to be gathered from nicknames, from

provincialisms, from the slang of great cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so

pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of the deaf and dumb, from the

jabbering of animals, from the analysis of sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords

a visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said to know what we can

manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing what

language is not. The study of any foreign language may be made also a study of Comparative Philology.

There are several points, such as the nature of irregular verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, the influence of

euphony, the decay or loss of inflections, the elements of syntax, which may be examined as well in the

history of our own language as of any other. A few well selected questions may lead the student at once into

the heart of the mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existence generally more irregular

than any other parts of speech? Why is the number of words so small in which the sound is an echo of the

sense? Why does the meaning of words depart so widely from their etymology? Why do substantives often

differ in meaning from the verbs to which they are related, adverbs from adjectives? Why do words differing

in origin coalesce in the same sound though retaining their differences of meaning? Why are some verbs

impersonal? Why are there only so many parts of speech, and on what principle are they divided? These are a

few crucial questions which give us an insight from different points of view into the true nature of language.

(6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the false appearances in which grammar

and philology, or the love of system generally, have clothed it. We have also sought to indicate the sources of

our knowledge of it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we may now proceed to consider some of

i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common also to the animals, is imitation. The lion

roars, the wolf howls in the solitude of the forest: they are answered by similar cries heard from a distance.

The bird, too, mimics the voice of man and makes answer to him. Man tells to man the secret place in which

he is hiding himself; he remembers and repeats the sound which he has heard. The love of imitation becomes

a passion and an instinct to him. Primitive men learnt to speak from one another, like a child from its mother

or nurse. They learnt of course a rudimentary, halfarticulate language, the cry or song or speech which was

the expression of what we now call human thoughts and feelings. We may still remark how much greater and

more natural the exercise of the power is in the use of language than in any other process or action of the

ii. Imitation provided the first material of language: but it was 'without form and void.' During how many

years or hundreds or thousands of years the imitative or halfarticulate stage continued there is no possibility

of determining. But we may reasonably conjecture that there was a time when the vocal utterance of man was

intermediate between what we now call language and the cry of a bird or animal. Speech before language was

a rudis indigestaque materies, not yet distributed into words and sentences, in which the cry of fear or joy

mingled with more definite sounds recognized by custom as the expressions of things or events. It was the

principle of analogy which introduced into this 'indigesta moles' order and measure. It was Anaxagoras' omou

panta chremata, eita nous elthon diekosmese: the light of reason lighted up all things and at once began to

arrange them. In every sentence, in every word and every termination of a word, this power of forming

relations to one another was contained. There was a proportion of sound to sound, of meaning to meaning, of

meaning to sound. The cases and numbers of nouns, the persons, tenses, numbers of verbs, were generally on

the same or nearly the same pattern and had the same meaning. The sounds by which they were expressed

were roughhewn at first; after a while they grew more refinedthe natural laws of euphony began to affect

them. The rules of syntax are likewise based upon analogy. Time has an analogy with space, arithmetic with

geometry. Not only in musical notes, but in the quantity, quality, accent, rhythm of human speech, trivial or

serious, there is a law of proportion. As in things of beauty, as in all nature, in the composition as well as in

the motion of all things, there is a similarity of relations by which they are held together.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the analogies of language are always uniform: there may be often a

choice between several, and sometimes one and sometimes another will prevail. In Greek there are three

declensions of nouns; the forms of cases in one of them may intrude upon another. Similarly verbs in omega

and mu iota interchange forms of tenses, and the completed paradigm of the verb is often made up of both.

The same nouns may be partly declinable and partly indeclinable, and in some of their cases may have fallen

out of use. Here are rules with exceptions; they are not however really exceptions, but contain in themselves

indications of other rules. Many of these interruptions or variations of analogy occur in pronouns or in the

verb of existence of which the forms were too common and therefore too deeply imbedded in language

entirely to drop out. The same verbs in the same meaning may sometimes take one case, sometimes another.

The participle may also have the character of an adjective, the adverb either of an adjective or of a

preposition. These exceptions are as regular as the rules, but the causes of them are seldom known to us.

Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere intersected by the lines of analogy. Like

number from which it seems to be derived, the principle of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern the

similarities and differences of things, and their relations to one another. At first these are such as lie on the

surface only; after a time they are seen by men to reach farther down into the nature of things. Gradually in

language they arrange themselves into a sort of imperfect system; groups of personal and case endings are

placed side by side. The fertility of language produces many more than are wanted; and the superfluous ones

are utilized by the assignment to them of new meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially

compensated by each other. It must be remembered that in all the languages which have a literature, certainly

in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, we are not at the beginning but almost at the end of the linguistic process; we have

reached a time when the verb and the noun are nearly perfected, though in no language did they completely

perfect themselves, because for some unknown reason the motive powers of languages seem to have ceased

when they were on the eve of completion: they became fixed or crystallized in an imperfect form either from

the influence of writing and literature, or because no further differentiation of them was required for the

intelligibility of language. So not without admixture and confusion and displacement and contamination of

sounds and the meanings of words, a lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no

further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails in all the vast domain of language,

there is no answer to the question; or no other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which, like

number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both visible and intellectual. We know

from experience that it does not (a) arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a Latin

noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of being understood,much less articulation

would suffice for this; nor (c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds. Such notions

were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive man. We may speak of a latent instinct, of a

survival of the fittest, easiest, most euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of two competing

sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our knowledge. We may try to grasp the infinity of

language either under the figure of a limitless plain divided into countries and districts by natural boundaries,

or of a vast river eternally flowing whose origin is concealed from us; we may apprehend partially the laws

by which speech is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if we should never know, any more than

in the parallel case of the origin of species, how vocal sounds received life and grew, and in the form of

iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even prior to it comes the principle of

onomatopea, which is itself a kind of analogy or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater

number of words it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of language is it entirely lost.

It belongs chiefly to early language, in which words were few; and its influence grew less and less as time

went on. To the ear which had a sense of harmony it became a barbarism which disturbed the flow and

equilibrium of discourse; it was an excrescence which had to be cut out, a survival which needed to be got rid

of, because it was out of keeping with the rest. It remained for the most part only as a formative principle,

which used words and letters not as crude imitations of other natural sounds, but as symbols of ideas which

were naturally associated with them. It received in another way a new character; it affected not so much

single words, as larger portions of human speech. It regulated the juxtaposition of sounds and the cadence of

sentences. It was the music, not of song, but of speech, in prose as well as verse. The old onomatopea of

primitive language was refined into an onomatopea of a higher kind, in which it is no longer true to say that a

particular sound corresponds to a motion or action of man or beast or movement of nature, but that in all the

higher uses of language the sound is the echo of the sense, especially in poetry, in which beauty and

expressiveness are given to human thoughts by the harmonious composition of the words, syllables, letters,

accents, quantities, rhythms, rhymes, varieties and contrasts of all sorts. The poet with his 'Break, break,

break' or his e pasin nekuessi kataphthimenoisin anassein or his 'longius ex altoque sinum trahit,' can produce

a far finer music than any crude imitations of things or actions in sound, although a letter or two having this

imitative power may be a lesser element of beauty in such passages. The same subtle sensibility, which

adapts the word to the thing, adapts the sentence or cadence to the general meaning or spirit of the passage.

This is the higher onomatopea which has banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in great

We can see clearly enough that letters or collocations of letters do by various degrees of strength or

weakness, length or shortness, emphasis or pitch, become the natural expressions of the finer parts of human

feeling or thought. And not only so, but letters themselves have a significance; as Plato observes that the

letter rho accent is expressive of motion, the letters delta and tau of binding and rest, the letter lambda of

smoothness, nu of inwardness, the letter eta of length, the letter omicron of roundness. These were often

combined so as to form composite notions, as for example in tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged), thrauein

(crush), krouein (strike), thruptein (break), pumbein (whirl),in all which words we notice a parallel

composition of sounds in their English equivalents. Plato also remarks, as we remark, that the onomatopoetic

principle is far from prevailing uniformly, and further that no explanation of language consistently

corresponds with any system of philosophy, however great may be the light which language throws upon the

nature of the mind. Both in Greek and English we find groups of words such as string, swing, sling, spring,

sting, which are parallel to one another and may be said to derive their vocal effect partly from contrast of

letters, but in which it is impossible to assign a precise amount of meaning to each of the expressive and

onomatopoetic letters. A few of them are directly imitative, as for example the omega in oon, which

represents the round form of the egg by the figure of the mouth: or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of

the sound of the word corresponds to the thing signified by it; or bombos (buzzing), of which the first

syllable, as in its English equivalent, has the meaning of a deep sound. We may observe also (as we see in the

case of the poor stammerer) that speech has the cooperation of the whole body and may be often assisted or

half expressed by gesticulation. A sound or word is not the work of the vocal organs only; nearly the whole of

the upper part of the human frame, including head, chest, lungs, have a share in creating it; and it may be

accompanied by a movement of the eyes, nose, fingers, hands, feet which contributes to the effect of it.

The principle of onomatopea has fallen into discredit, partly because it has been supposed to imply an actual

manufacture of words out of syllables and letters, like a piece of joiner's work,a theory of language which

is more and more refuted by facts, and more and more going out of fashion with philologians; and partly also

because the traces of onomatopea in separate words become almost obliterated in the course of ages. The poet

of language cannot put in and pull out letters, as a painter might insert or blot out a shade of colour to give

effect to his picture. It would be ridiculous for him to alter any received form of a word in order to render it

more expressive of the sense. He can only select, perhaps out of some dialect, the form which is already best

adapted to his purpose. The true onomatopea is not a creative, but a formative principle, which in the later

stage of the history of language ceases to act upon individual words; but still works through the collocation of

them in the sentence or paragraph, and the adaptation of every word, syllable, letter to one another and to the

iv. Next, under a distinct head, although not separable from the preceding, may be considered the

differentiation of languages, i.e. the manner in which differences of meaning and form have arisen in them.

Into their first creation we have ceased to enquire: it is their aftergrowth with which we are now concerned.

How did the roots or substantial portions of words become modified or inflected? and how did they receive

separate meanings? First we remark that words are attracted by the sounds and senses of other words, so that

they form groups of nouns and verbs analogous in sound and sense to one another, each noun or verb putting

forth inflexions, generally of two or three patterns, and with exceptions. We do not say that we know how

sense became first allied to sound; but we have no difficulty in ascertaining how the sounds and meanings of

words were in time parted off or differentiated. (1) The chief causes which regulate the variations of sound

are (a) double or differing analogies, which lead sometimes to one form, sometimes to another (b) euphony,

by which is meant chiefly the greater pleasure to the ear and the greater facility to the organs of speech which

is given by a new formation or pronunciation of a word (c) the necessity of finding new expressions for new

classes or processes of things. We are told that changes of sound take place by innumerable gradations until a

whole tribe or community or society find themselves acquiescing in a new pronunciation or use of language.

Yet no one observes the change, or is at all aware that in the course of a lifetime he and his contemporaries

have appreciably varied their intonation or use of words. On the other hand, the necessities of language seem

to require that the intermediate sounds or meanings of words should quickly become fixed or set and not

continue in a state of transition. The process of settling down is aided by the organs of speech and by the use

of writing and printing. (2) The meaning of words varies because ideas vary or the number of things which is

included under them or with which they are associated is increased. A single word is thus made to do duty for

many more things than were formerly expressed by it; and it parts into different senses when the classes of

things or ideas which are represented by it are themselves different and distinct. A figurative use of a word

may easily pass into a new sense: a new meaning caught up by association may become more important than

all the rest. The good or neutral sense of a word, such as Jesuit, Puritan, Methodist, Heretic, has been often

converted into a bad one by the malevolence of party spirit. Double forms suggest different meanings and are

often used to express them; and the form or accent of a word has been not unfrequently altered when there is

a difference of meaning. The difference of gender in nouns is utilized for the same reason. New meanings of

words push themselves into the vacant spaces of language and retire when they are no longer needed.

Language equally abhors vacancy and superfluity. But the remedial measures by which both are eliminated

are not due to any conscious action of the human mind; nor is the force exerted by them constraining or

(7) We have shown that language, although subject to laws, is far from being of an exact and uniform nature.

We may now speak briefly of the faults of language. They may be compared to the faults of Geology, in

which different strata cross one another or meet at an angle, or mix with one another either by slow

transitions or by violent convulsions, leaving many lacunae which can be no longer filled up, and often

becoming so complex that no true explanation of them can be given. So in language there are the cross

influences of meaning and sound, of logic and grammar, of differing analogies, of words and the inflexions of

words, which often come into conflict with each other. The grammarian, if he were to form new words,

would make them all of the same pattern according to what he conceives to be the rule, that is, the more

common usage of language. The subtlety of nature goes far beyond art, and it is complicated by irregularity,

so that often we can hardly say that there is a right or wrong in the formation of words. For almost any

formation which is not at variance with the first principles of language is possible and may be defended.

The imperfection of language is really due to the formation and correlation of words by accident, that is to

say, by principles which are unknown to us. Hence we see why Plato, like ourselves unable to comprehend

the whole of language, was constrained to 'supplement the poor creature imitation by another poor creature

convention.' But the poor creature convention in the end proves too much for all the rest: for we do not ask

what is the origin of words or whether they are formed according to a correct analogy, but what is the usage

of them; and we are compelled to admit with Hermogenes in Plato and with Horace that usage is the ruling

(8) There are two ways in which a language may attain permanence or fixity. First, it may have been

embodied in poems or hymns or laws, which may be repeated for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years

with a religious accuracy, so that to the priests or rhapsodists of a nation the whole or the greater part of a

language is literally preserved; secondly, it may be written down and in a written form distributed more or

less widely among the whole nation. In either case the language which is familiarly spoken may have grown

up wholly or in a great measure independently of them. (1) The first of these processes has been sometimes

attended by the result that the sound of the words has been carefully preserved and that the meaning of them

has either perished wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the efforts of modern philology. The verses

have been repeated as a chant or part of a ritual, but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech. (2)

The invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular epoch, and we are apt to think that such

an inestimable gift would have immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken a long

time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may have elapsed before it came into common use.

Its influence on language has been increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention of printing.

Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were only dialects. So they continued to be

in parts of the country in which writing was not used or in which there was no diffusion of literature. In most

of the counties of England there is still a provincial style, which has been sometimes made by a great poet the

vehicle of his fancies. When a book sinks into the mind of a nation, such as Luther's Bible or the Authorized

English Translation of the Bible, or again great classical works like Shakspere or Milton, not only have new

powers of expression been diffused through a whole nation, but a great step towards uniformity has been

made. The instinct of language demands regular grammar and correct spelling: these are imprinted deeply on

the tablets of a nation's memory by a common use of classical and popular writers. In our own day we have

attained to a point at which nearly every printed book is spelt correctly and written grammatically.

(9) Proceeding further to trace the influence of literature on language we note some other causes which have

affected the higher use of it: such as (1) the necessity of clearness and connexion; (2) the fear of tautology;

(3) the influence of metre, rhythm, rhyme, and of the language of prose and verse upon one another; (4) the

It has been usual to depreciate modern languages when compared with ancient. The latter are regarded as

furnishing a type of excellence to which the former cannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern

languages, if through the loss of inflections and genders they lack some power or beauty or expressiveness or

precision which is possessed by the ancient, are in many other respects superior to them: the thought is

generally clearer, the connexion closer, the sentence and paragraph are better distributed. The best modern

languages, for example English or French, possess as great a power of selfimprovement as the Latin, if not

as the Greek. Nor does there seem to be any reason why they should ever decline or decay. It is a popular

remark that our great writers are beginning to disappear: it may also be remarked that whenever a great writer

appears in the future he will find the English language as perfect and as ready for use as in the days of

Shakspere or Milton. There is no reason to suppose that English or French will ever be reduced to the low

level of Modern Greek or of Mediaeval Latin. The wide diffusion of great authors would make such a decline

impossible. Nor will modern languages be easily broken up by amalgamation with each other. The distance

between them is too wide to be spanned, the differences are too great to be overcome, and the use of printing

The structure of the English language differs greatly from that of either Latin or Greek. In the two latter,

especially in Greek, sentences are joined together by connecting particles. They are distributed on the right

hand and on the left by men, de, alla, kaitoi, kai de and the like, or deduced from one another by ara, de, oun,

toinun and the like. In English the majority of sentences are independent and in apposition to one another;

they are laid side by side or slightly connected by the copula. But within the sentence the expression of the

logical relations of the clauses is closer and more exact: there is less of apposition and participial structure.

The sentences thus laid side by side are also constructed into paragraphs; these again are less distinctly

marked in Greek and Latin than in English. Generally French, German, and English have an advantage over

the classical languages in point of accuracy. The three concords are more accurately observed in English than

in either Greek or Latin. On the other hand, the extension of the familiar use of the masculine and feminine

gender to objects of sense and abstract ideas as well as to men and animals no doubt lends a nameless grace

to style which we have a difficulty in appreciating, and the possible variety in the order of words gives more

flexibility and also a kind of dignity to the period. Of the comparative effect of accent and quantity and of the

Another quality in which modern are superior to ancient languages is freedom from tautology. No English

style is thought tolerable in which, except for the sake of emphasis, the same words are repeated at short

intervals. Of course the length of the interval must depend on the character of the word. Striking words and

expressions cannot be allowed to reappear, if at all, except at the distance of a page or more. Pronouns,

prepositions, conjunctions may or rather must recur in successive lines. It seems to be a kind of impertinence

to the reader and strikes unpleasantly both on the mind and on the ear that the same sounds should be used

twice over, when another word or turn of expression would have given a new shade of meaning to the

thought and would have added a pleasing variety to the sound. And the mind equally rejects the repetition of

the word and the use of a mere synonym for it,e.g. felicity and happiness. The cultivated mind desires

something more, which a skilful writer is easily able to supply out of his treasurehouse.

The fear of tautology has doubtless led to the multiplications of words and the meanings of words, and

generally to an enlargement of the vocabulary. It is a very early instinct of language; for ancient poetry is

almost as free from tautology as the best modern writings. The speech of young children, except in so far as

they are compelled to repeat themselves by the fewness of their words, also escapes from it. When they grow

up and have ideas which are beyond their powers of expression, especially in writing, tautology begins to

appear. In like manner when language is 'contaminated' by philosophy it is apt to become awkward, to

stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow and freedom. No philosophical writer with the exception of Plato,

who is himself not free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any high degree of literary

To poetry the form and polish of language is chiefly to be attributed; and the most critical period in the

history of language is the transition from verse to prose. At first mankind were contented to express their

thoughts in a set form of words having a kind of rhythm; to which regularity was given by accent and

quantity. But after a time they demanded a greater degree of freedom, and to those who had all their life been

hearing poetry the first introduction of prose had the charm of novelty. The prose romances into which the

Homeric Poems were converted, for a while probably gave more delight to the hearers or readers of them

than the Poems themselves, and in time the relation of the two was reversed: the poems which had once been

a necessity of the human mind became a luxury: they were now superseded by prose, which in all succeeding

ages became the natural vehicle of expression to all mankind. Henceforward prose and poetry formed each

other. A comparatively slender link between them was also furnished by proverbs. We may trace in poetry

how the simple succession of lines, not without monotony, has passed into a complicated period, and how in

prose, rhythm and accent and the order of words and the balance of clauses, sometimes not without a slight

admixture of rhyme, make up a new kind of harmony, swelling into strains not less majestic than those of

One of the most curious and characteristic features of language, affecting both syntax and style, is idiom. The

meaning of the word 'idiom' is that which is peculiar, that which is familiar, the word or expression which

strikes us or comes home to us, which is more readily understood or more easily remembered. It is a quality

which really exists in infinite degrees, which we turn into differences of kind by applying the term only to

conspicuous and striking examples of words or phrases which have this quality. It often supersedes the laws

of language or the rules of grammar, or rather is to be regarded as another law of language which is natural

and necessary. The word or phrase which has been repeated many times over is more intelligible and familiar

to us than one which is rare, and our familiarity with it more than compensates for incorrectness or

inaccuracy in the use of it. Striking expressions also which have moved the hearts of nations or are the

precious stones and jewels of great authors partake of the nature of idioms: they are taken out of the sphere of

grammar and are exempt from the proprieties of language. Every one knows that we often put words together

in a manner which would be intolerable if it were not idiomatic. We cannot argue either about the meaning of

words or the use of constructions that because they are used in one connexion they will be legitimate in

another, unless we allow for this principle. We can bear to have words and sentences used in new senses or in

a new order or even a little perverted in meaning when we are quite familiar with them. Quotations are as

often applied in a sense which the author did not intend as in that which he did. The parody of the words of

Shakspere or of the Bible, which has in it something of the nature of a lie, is far from unpleasing to us. The

better known words, even if their meaning be perverted, are more agreeable to us and have a greater power

over us. Most of us have experienced a sort of delight and feeling of curiosity when we first came across or

There are associations of sound and of sense by which every word is linked to every other. One letter

harmonizes with another; every verb or noun derives its meaning, not only from itself, but from the words

with which it is associated. Some reflection of them near or distant is embodied in it. In any new use of a

word all the existing uses of it have to be considered. Upon these depends the question whether it will bear

the proposed extension of meaning or not. According to the famous expression of Luther, 'Words are living

creatures, having hands and feet.' When they cease to retain this living power of adaptation, when they are

only put together like the parts of a piece of furniture, language becomes unpoetical, in expressive, dead.

Grammars would lead us to suppose that words have a fixed form and sound. Lexicons assign to each word a

definite meaning or meanings. They both tend to obscure the fact that the sentence precedes the word and that

all language is relative. (1) It is relative to its own context. Its meaning is modified by what has been said

before and after in the same or in some other passage: without comparing the context we are not sure whether

it is used in the same sense even in two successive sentences. (2) It is relative to facts, to time, place, and

occasion: when they are already known to the hearer or reader, they may be presupposed; there is no need to

allude to them further. (3) It is relative to the knowledge of the writer and reader or of the speaker and hearer.

Except for the sake of order and consecutiveness nothing ought to be expressed which is already commonly

or universally known. A word or two may be sufficient to give an intimation to a friend; a long or elaborate

speech or composition is required to explain some new idea to a popular audience or to the ordinary reader or

to a young pupil. Grammars and dictionaries are not to be despised; for in teaching we need clearness rather

than subtlety. But we must not therefore forget that there is also a higher ideal of language in which all is

relativesounds to sounds, words to words, the parts to the wholein which besides the lesser context of

the book or speech, there is also the larger context of history and circumstances.

The study of Comparative Philology has introduced into the world a new science which more than any other

binds up man with nature, and distant ages and countries with one another. It may be said to have thrown a

light upon all other sciences and upon the nature of the human mind itself. The true conception of it dispels

many errors, not only of metaphysics and theology, but also of natural knowledge. Yet it is far from certain

that this newlyfound science will continue to progress in the same surprising manner as heretofore; or that

even if our materials are largely increased, we shall arrive at much more definite conclusions than at present.

Like some other branches of knowledge, it may be approaching a point at which it can no longer be profitably

studied. But at any rate it has brought back the philosophy of language from theory to fact; it has passed out

of the region of guesses and hypotheses, and has attained the dignity of an Inductive Science. And it is not

without practical and political importance. It gives a new interest to distant and subject countries; it brings

back the dawning light from one end of the earth to the other. Nations, like individuals, are better understood

by us when we know something of their early life; and when they are better understood by us, we feel more

kindly towards them. Lastly, we may remember that all knowledge is valuable for its own sake; and we may

also hope that a deeper insight into the nature of human speech will give us a greater command of it and

enable us to make a nobler use of it. (Compare again W. Humboldt, 'Ueber die Verschiedenheit des

menschlichen Sprachbaues;' M. Muller, 'Lectures on the Science of Language;' Steinthal, 'Einleitung in die

Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft:' and for the latter part of the Essay, Delbruck, 'Study of Language;'

Paul's 'Principles of the History of Language:' to the latter work the author of this Essay is largely indebted.)

HERMOGENES: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names;

he says that they are natural and not conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use;

but that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians. Whereupon I

ask him, whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not, and he answers 'Yes.' And Socrates? 'Yes.'

Then every man's name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this he replies'If all the world were to

call you Hermogenes, that would not be your name.' And when I am anxious to have a further explanation he

is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would

only tell, and could entirely convince me, if he chose to be intelligible. Tell me, Socrates, what this oracle

means; or rather tell me, if you will be so good, what is your own view of the truth or correctness of names,

SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that 'hard is the knowledge of the good.' And the

knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the

fiftydrachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and languagethese

are his own wordsand then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness

of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the singledrachma course, and therefore, I do not know the truth

about such matters; I will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus in the investigation of them. When he

declares that your name is not really Hermogenes, I suspect that he is only making fun of you;he means to

say that you are no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after a fortune and never in luck. But,

as I was saying, there is a good deal of difficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave

HERMOGENES: I have often talked over this matter, both with Cratylus and others, and cannot convince

myself that there is any principle of correctness in names other than convention and agreement; any name

which you give, in my opinion, is the right one, and if you change that and give another, the new name is as

correct as the oldwe frequently change the names of our slaves, and the newlyimposed name is as good

as the old: for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users;such is

my view. But if I am mistaken I shall be happy to hear and learn of Cratylus, or of any one else.

SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be right, Hermogenes: let us see;Your meaning is, that the name of

SOCRATES: Well, now, let me take an instance;suppose that I call a man a horse or a horse a man, you

mean to say that a man will be rightly called a horse by me individually, and rightly called a man by the rest

of the world; and a horse again would be rightly called a man by me and a horse by the world:that is your

SOCRATES: But how about truth, then? you would acknowledge that there is in words a true and a false?

SOCRATES: And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not?

SOCRATES: Would you say the large parts and not the smaller ones, or every part?

SOCRATES: Then, if propositions may be true and false, names may be true and false?

SOCRATES: And the name of anything is that which any one affirms to be the name?

SOCRATES: And will there be so many names of each thing as everybody says that there are? and will they

HERMOGENES: Yes, Socrates, I can conceive no correctness of names other than this; you give one name,

and I another; and in different cities and countries there are different names for the same things; Hellenes

differ from barbarians in their use of names, and the several Hellenic tribes from one another.

SOCRATES: But would you say, Hermogenes, that the things differ as the names differ? and are they

relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us? For he says that man is the measure of all things, and that things

are to me as they appear to me, and that they are to you as they appear to you. Do you agree with him, or

HERMOGENES: There have been times, Socrates, when I have been driven in my perplexity to take refuge

SOCRATES: What! have you ever been driven to admit that there was no such thing as a bad man?

HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but I have often had reason to think that there are very bad men, and a good

SOCRATES: And would you hold that the very good were the very wise, and the very evil very foolish?

SOCRATES: But if Protagoras is right, and the truth is that things are as they appear to any one, how can

SOCRATES: And if, on the other hand, wisdom and folly are really distinguishable, you will allow, I think,

that the assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man

SOCRATES: Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus, that all things equally belong to all men at

the same moment and always; for neither on his view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and

SOCRATES: But if neither is right, and things are not relative to individuals, and all things do not equally

belong to all at the same moment and always, they must be supposed to have their own proper and permanent

essence: they are not in relation to us, or influenced by us, fluctuating according to our fancy, but they are

independent, and maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by nature.

SOCRATES: Does what I am saying apply only to the things themselves, or equally to the actions which

SOCRATES: Then the actions also are done according to their proper nature, and not according to our

opinion of them? In cutting, for example, we do not cut as we please, and with any chance instrument; but we

cut with the proper instrument only, and according to the natural process of cutting; and the natural process is

SOCRATES: Again, in burning, not every way is the right way; but the right way is the natural way, and the

SOCRATES: And will a man speak correctly who speaks as he pleases? Will not the successful speaker

rather be he who speaks in the natural way of speaking, and as things ought to be spoken, and with the natural

SOCRATES: And if speaking is a sort of action and has a relation to acts, is not naming also a sort of

SOCRATES: And we saw that actions were not relative to ourselves, but had a special nature of their own?

SOCRATES: Then the argument would lead us to infer that names ought to be given according to a natural

process, and with a proper instrument, and not at our pleasure: in this and no other way shall we name with

SOCRATES: And that which has to be woven or pierced has to be woven or pierced with something?

SOCRATES: Suppose that I ask, 'What sort of instrument is a shuttle?' And you answer, 'A weaving

SOCRATES: And I ask again, 'What do we do when we weave?'The answer is, that we separate or

SOCRATES: And may not a similar description be given of an awl, and of instruments in general?

SOCRATES: And now suppose that I ask a similar question about names: will you answer me? Regarding

SOCRATES: Do we not give information to one another, and distinguish things according to their natures?

SOCRATES: Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of

SOCRATES: Then the weaver will use the shuttle welland well means like a weaver? and the teacher will

SOCRATES: And when the weaver uses the shuttle, whose work will he be using well?

SOCRATES: Then the teacher, when he gives us a name, uses the work of the legislator?

SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, not every man is able to give a name, but only a maker of names; and this

SOCRATES: And how does the legislator make names? and to what does he look? Consider this in the light

of the previous instances: to what does the carpenter look in making the shuttle? Does he not look to that

SOCRATES: And suppose the shuttle to be broken in making, will he make another, looking to the broken

SOCRATES: And whatever shuttles are wanted, for the manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen,

woollen, or other material, ought all of them to have the true form of the shuttle; and whatever is the shuttle

best adapted to each kind of work, that ought to be the form which the maker produces in each case.

SOCRATES: And the same holds of other instruments: when a man has discovered the instrument which is

naturally adapted to each work, he must express this natural form, and not others which he fancies, in the

material, whatever it may be, which he employs; for example, he ought to know how to put into iron the

SOCRATES: And how to put into wood forms of shuttles adapted by nature to their uses?

SOCRATES: For the several forms of shuttles naturally answer to the several kinds of webs; and this is true

SOCRATES: Then, as to names: ought not our legislator also to know how to put the true natural name of

each thing into sounds and syllables, and to make and give all names with a view to the ideal name, if he is to

be a namer in any true sense? And we must remember that different legislators will not use the same

syllables. For neither does every smith, although he may be making the same instrument for the same

purpose, make them all of the same iron. The form must be the same, but the material may vary, and still the

instrument may be equally good of whatever iron made, whether in Hellas or in a foreign country;there is

SOCRATES: And the legislator, whether he be Hellene or barbarian, is not therefore to be deemed by you a

worse legislator, provided he gives the true and proper form of the name in whatever syllables; this or that

SOCRATES: But who then is to determine whether the proper form is given to the shuttle, whatever sort of

SOCRATES: And who uses the work of the lyremaker? Will not he be the man who knows how to direct

what is being done, and who will know also whether the work is being well done or not?

SOCRATES: And who will be best able to direct the legislator in his work, and will know whether the work

SOCRATES: And him who knows how to ask and answer you would call a dialectician?

SOCRATES: Then the work of the carpenter is to make a rudder, and the pilot has to direct him, if the

SOCRATES: And the work of the legislator is to give names, and the dialectician must be his director if the

SOCRATES: Then, Hermogenes, I should say that this giving of names can be no such light matter as you

fancy, or the work of light or chance persons; and Cratylus is right in saying that things have names by

nature, and that not every man is an artificer of names, but he only who looks to the name which each thing

by nature has, and is able to express the true forms of things in letters and syllables.

HERMOGENES: I cannot answer you, Socrates; but I find a difficulty in changing my opinion all in a

moment, and I think that I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me what this is which you

SOCRATES: My good Hermogenes, I have none to show. Was I not telling you just now (but you have

forgotten), that I knew nothing, and proposing to share the enquiry with you? But now that you and I have

talked over the matter, a step has been gained; for we have discovered that names have by nature a truth, and

SOCRATES: And what is the nature of this truth or correctness of names? That, if you care to know, is the

SOCRATES: The true way is to have the assistance of those who know, and you must pay them well both in

money and in thanks; these are the Sophists, of whom your brother, Callias, hasrather dearlybought the

reputation of wisdom. But you have not yet come into your inheritance, and therefore you had better go to

him, and beg and entreat him to tell you what he has learnt from Protagoras about the fitness of names.

HERMOGENES: But how inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating Protagoras and his truth ('Truth'

was the title of the book of Protagoras; compare Theaet.), I were to attach any value to what he and his book

HERMOGENES: And where does Homer say anything about names, and what does he say?

SOCRATES: He often speaks of them; notably and nobly in the places where he distinguishes the different

names which Gods and men give to the same things. Does he not in these passages make a remarkable

statement about the correctness of names? For the Gods must clearly be supposed to call things by their right

HERMOGENES: Why, of course they call them rightly, if they call them at all. But to what are you

SOCRATES: Do you not know what he says about the river in Troy who had a single combat with

SOCRATES: Well, and about this riverto know that he ought to be called Xanthus and not

to be taught how much more correct the name Chalcis is than the name Cymindisdo you deem that a light

matter? Or about Batieia and Myrina? (Compare Il. 'The hill which men call Batieia and the immortals the

tomb of the sportive Myrina.') And there are many other observations of the same kind in Homer and other

poets. Now, I think that this is beyond the understanding of you and me; but the names of Scamandrius and

Astyanax, which he affirms to have been the names of Hector's son, are more within the range of human

faculties, as I am disposed to think; and what the poet means by correctness may be more readily

apprehended in that instance: you will remember I dare say the lines to which I refer? (Il.)

SOCRATES: Let me ask you, then, which did Homer think the more correct of the names given to Hector's

SOCRATES: How would you answer, if you were asked whether the wise or the unwise are more likely to

SOCRATES: And Homer, as you know, says that the Trojan men called him Astyanax (king of the city); but

if the men called him Astyanax, the other name of Scamandrius could only have been given to him by the

SOCRATES: And must not Homer have imagined the Trojans to be wiser than their wives?

SOCRATES: Then he must have thought Astyanax to be a more correct name for the boy than Scamandrius?

SOCRATES: And what is the reason of this? Let us consider:does he not himself suggest a very good

This appears to be a good reason for calling the son of the saviour king of the city which his father was

SOCRATES: The name appears to me to be very nearly the same as the name of Astyanaxboth are

Hellenic; and a king (anax) and a holder (ektor) have nearly the same meaning, and are both descriptive of a

king; for a man is clearly the holder of that of which he is king; he rules, and owns, and holds it. But, perhaps,

you may think that I am talking nonsense; and indeed I believe that I myself did not know what I meant when

I imagined that I had found some indication of the opinion of Homer about the correctness of names.

HERMOGENES: I assure you that I think otherwise, and I believe you to be on the right track.

SOCRATES: There is reason, I think, in calling the lion's whelp a lion, and the foal of a horse a horse; I am

speaking only of the ordinary course of nature, when an animal produces after his kind, and not of

extraordinary births;if contrary to nature a horse have a calf, then I should not call that a foal but a calf; nor

do I call any inhuman birth a man, but only a natural birth. And the same may be said of trees and other

SOCRATES: Very good. But you had better watch me and see that I do not play tricks with you. For on the

same principle the son of a king is to be called a king. And whether the syllables of the name are the same or

not the same, makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained; nor does the addition or subtraction of a

letter make any difference so long as the essence of the thing remains in possession of the name and appears

SOCRATES: A very simple matter. I may illustrate my meaning by the names of letters, which you know

are not the same as the letters themselves with the exception of the four epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega; the

names of the rest, whether vowels or consonants, are made up of other letters which we add to them; but so

long as we introduce the meaning, and there can be no mistake, the name of the letter is quite correct. Take,

for example, the letter betathe addition of eta, tau, alpha, gives no offence, and does not prevent the whole

name from having the value which the legislator intendedso well did he know how to give the letters

SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of a king? a king will often be the son of a king, the good son or

the noble son of a good or noble sire; and similarly the offspring of every kind, in the regular course of

nature, is like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be disguised until they

appear different to the ignorant person, and he may not recognize them, although they are the same, just as

any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to

the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the same, and he is not put out by the addition; and in

like manner the etymologist is not put out by the addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or

indeed by the change of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the meaning. As was just now said, the

names of Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, which is tau, and yet they have the same meaning.

And how little in common with the letters of their names has Archepolis (ruler of the city)and yet the

meaning is the same. And there are many other names which just mean 'king.' Again, there are several names

for a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (good warrior);

and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and

there are many others which might be cited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same

SOCRATES: The same names, then, ought to be assigned to those who follow in the course of nature?

SOCRATES: And what of those who follow out of the course of nature, and are prodigies? for example,

when a good and religious man has an irreligious son, he ought to bear the name not of his father, but of the

class to which he belongs, just as in the case which was before supposed of a horse foaling a calf.

SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be called irreligious?

SOCRATES: He should not be called Theophilus (beloved of God) or Mnesitheus (mindful of God), or any

of these names: if names are correctly given, his should have an opposite meaning.

SOCRATES: Again, Hermogenes, there is Orestes (the man of the mountains) who appears to be rightly

called; whether chance gave the name, or perhaps some poet who meant to express the brutality and

SOCRATES: Yes, for as his name, so also is his nature; Agamemnon (admirable for remaining) is one who

is patient and persevering in the accomplishment of his resolves, and by his virtue crowns them; and his

continuance at Troy with all the vast army is a proof of that admirable endurance in him which is signified by

the name Agamemnon. I also think that Atreus is rightly called; for his murder of Chrysippus and his

exceeding cruelty to Thyestes are damaging and destructive to his reputationthe name is a little altered and

disguised so as not to be intelligible to every one, but to the etymologist there is no difficulty in seeing the

meaning, for whether you think of him as ateires the stubborn, or as atrestos the fearless, or as ateros the

destructive one, the name is perfectly correct in every point of view. And I think that Pelops is also named

appropriately; for, as the name implies, he is rightly called Pelops who sees what is near only (o ta pelas

SOCRATES: Because, according to the tradition, he had no forethought or foresight of all the evil which the

murder of Myrtilus would entail upon his whole race in remote ages; he saw only what was at hand and

immediate, or in other words, pelas (near), in his eagerness to win Hippodamia by all means for his bride.

Every one would agree that the name of Tantalus is rightly given and in accordance with nature, if the

SOCRATES: Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in his lifelast of all, came the

utter ruin of his country; and after his death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world

belowall this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine that some person who wanted to

call him Talantatos (the most weighted down by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus;

and into this form, by some accident of tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The name of Zeus, who is

his alleged father, has also an excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like a

sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use

the other half call him Dia; the two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name, as we

were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the

lord and king of all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although

divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin

uparchei). There is an irreverence, at first sight, in calling him son of Cronos (who is a proverb for stupidity),

and we might rather expect Zeus to be the child of a mighty intellect. Which is the fact; for this is the

meaning of his father's name: Kronos quasi Koros (Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a youth, but

signifying to chatharon chai acheraton tou nou, the pure and garnished mind (sc. apo tou chorein). He, as we

are informed by tradition, was begotten of Uranus, rightly so called (apo tou oran ta ano) from looking

upwards; which, as philosophers tell us, is the way to have a pure mind, and the name Uranus is therefore

correct. If I could remember the genealogy of Hesiod, I would have gone on and tried more conclusions of

the same sort on the remoter ancestors of the Gods,then I might have seen whether this wisdom, which has

come to me all in an instant, I know not whence, will or will not hold good to the end.

HERMOGENES: You seem to me, Socrates, to be quite like a prophet newly inspired, and to be uttering

SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and I believe that I caught the inspiration from the great Euthyphro of the

Prospaltian deme, who gave me a long lecture which commenced at dawn: he talked and I listened, and his

wisdom and enchanting ravishment has not only filled my ears but taken possession of my soul,and today I

shall let his superhuman power work and finish the investigation of namesthat will be the way; but

tomorrow, if you are so disposed, we will conjure him away, and make a purgation of him, if we can only

HERMOGENES: With all my heart; for am very curious to hear the rest of the enquiry about names.

SOCRATES: Then let us proceed; and where would you have us begin, now that we have got a sort of

outline of the enquiry? Are there any names which witness of themselves that they are not given arbitrarily,

but have a natural fitness? The names of heroes and of men in general are apt to be deceptive because they

are often called after ancestors with whose names, as we were saying, they may have no business; or they are

the expression of a wish like Eutychides (the son of good fortune), or Sosias (the Saviour), or Theophilus (the

beloved of God), and others. But I think that we had better leave these, for there will be more chance of

finding correctness in the names of immutable essences;there ought to have been more care taken about

them when they were named, and perhaps there may have been some more than human power at work

SOCRATES: Ought we not to begin with the consideration of the Gods, and show that they are rightly

SOCRATES: My notion would be something of this sort:I suspect that the sun, moon, earth, stars, and

heaven, which are still the Gods of many barbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes.

Seeing that they were always moving and running, from their running nature they were called Gods or

runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became acquainted with the other Gods, they proceeded to apply

SOCRATES: Demons! And what do you consider to be the meaning of this word? Tell me if my view is

SOCRATES: Do you not remember that he speaks of a golden race of men who came first?

'But now that fate has closed over this race They are holy demons upon the earth, Beneficent, averters of ills,

SOCRATES: What is the inference! Why, I suppose that he means by the golden men, not men literally

made of gold, but good and noble; and I am convinced of this, because he further says that we are the iron

SOCRATES: And do you not suppose that good men of our own day would by him be said to be of golden

SOCRATES: And therefore I have the most entire conviction that he called them demons, because they were

daemones (knowing or wise), and in our older Attic dialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets

say truly, that when a good man dies he has honour and a mighty portion among the dead, and becomes a

demon; which is a name given to him signifying wisdom. And I say too, that every wise man who happens to

be a good man is more than human (daimonion) both in life and death, and is rightly called a demon.

HERMOGENES: Then I rather think that I am of one mind with you; but what is the meaning of the word

SOCRATES: I think that there is no difficulty in explaining, for the name is not much altered, and signifies

SOCRATES: All of them sprang either from the love of a God for a mortal woman, or of a mortal man for a

Goddess; think of the word in the old Attic, and you will see better that the name heros is only a slight

alteration of Eros, from whom the heroes sprang: either this is the meaning, or, if not this, then they must

have been skilful as rhetoricians and dialecticians, and able to put the question (erotan), for eirein is

equivalent to legein. And therefore, as I was saying, in the Attic dialect the heroes turn out to be rhetoricians

and questioners. All this is easy enough; the noble breed of heroes are a tribe of sophists and rhetors. But can

HERMOGENES: No, I cannot; and I would not try even if I could, because I think that you are the more

SOCRATES: Your faith is not vain; for at this very moment a new and ingenious thought strikes me, and, if

I am not careful, before tomorrow's dawn I shall be wiser than I ought to be. Now, attend to me; and first,

remember that we often put in and pull out letters in words, and give names as we please and change the

accents. Take, for example, the word Dii Philos; in order to convert this from a sentence into a noun, we omit

one of the iotas and sound the middle syllable grave instead of acute; as, on the other hand, letters are

sometimes inserted in words instead of being omitted, and the acute takes the place of the grave.

SOCRATES: The name anthropos, which was once a sentence, and is now a noun, appears to be a case just

of this sort, for one letter, which is the alpha, has been omitted, and the acute on the last syllable has been

SOCRATES: I mean to say that the word 'man' implies that other animals never examine, or consider, or

look up at what they see, but that man not only sees (opope) but considers and looks up at that which he sees,

and hence he alone of all animals is rightly anthropos, meaning anathron a opopen.

HERMOGENES: I will take that which appears to me to follow next in order. You know the distinction of

SOCRATES: You want me first of all to examine the natural fitness of the word psuche (soul), and then of

SOCRATES: If I am to say what occurs to me at the moment, I should imagine that those who first used the

name psuche meant to express that the soul when in the body is the source of life, and gives the power of

breath and revival (anapsuchon), and when this reviving power fails then the body perishes and dies, and this,

if I am not mistaken, they called psyche. But please stay a moment; I fancy that I can discover something

which will be more acceptable to the disciples of Euthyphro, for I am afraid that they will scorn this

SOCRATES: What is that which holds and carries and gives life and motion to the entire nature of the body?

SOCRATES: And do you not believe with Anaxagoras, that mind or soul is the ordering and containing

SOCRATES: Then you may well call that power phuseche which carries and holds nature (e phusin okei, kai

HERMOGENES: Certainly; and this derivation is, I think, more scientific than the other.

SOCRATES: It is so; but I cannot help laughing, if I am to suppose that this was the true meaning of the

SOCRATES: That may be variously interpreted; and yet more variously if a little permutation is allowed.

For some say that the body is the grave (sema) of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present

life; or again the index of the soul, because the soul gives indications to (semainei) the body; probably the

Orphic poets were the inventors of the name, and they were under the impression that the soul is suffering the

punishment of sin, and that the body is an enclosure or prison in which the soul is incarcerated, kept safe

(soma, sozetai), as the name soma implies, until the penalty is paid; according to this view, not even a letter

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that we have said enough of this class of words. But have we any more

explanations of the names of the Gods, like that which you were giving of Zeus? I should like to know

SOCRATES: Yes, indeed, Hermogenes; and there is one excellent principle which, as men of sense, we

must acknowledge,that of the Gods we know nothing, either of their natures or of the names which they

give themselves; but we are sure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, are

true. And this is the best of all principles; and the next best is to say, as in prayers, that we will call them by

any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like, because we do not know of any other. That also, I

think, is a very good custom, and one which I should much wish to observe. Let us, then, if you please, in the

first place announce to them that we are not enquiring about them; we do not presume that we are able to do

so; but we are enquiring about the meaning of men in giving them these names,in this there can be small

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are quite right, and I would like to do as you say.

SOCRATES: My dear Hermogenes, the first imposers of names must surely have been considerable persons;

SOCRATES: They are the men to whom I should attribute the imposition of names. Even in foreign names,

if you analyze them, a meaning is still discernible. For example, that which we term ousia is by some called

esia, and by others again osia. Now that the essence of things should be called estia, which is akin to the first

of these (esia = estia), is rational enough. And there is reason in the Athenians calling that estia which

participates in ousia. For in ancient times we too seem to have said esia for ousia, and this you may note to

have been the idea of those who appointed that sacrifices should be first offered to estia, which was natural

enough if they meant that estia was the essence of things. Those again who read osia seem to have inclined to

the opinion of Heracleitus, that all things flow and nothing stands; with them the pushing principle (othoun)

is the cause and ruling power of all things, and is therefore rightly called osia. Enough of this, which is all

that we who know nothing can affirm. Next in order after Hestia we ought to consider Rhea and Cronos,

although the name of Cronos has been already discussed. But I dare say that I am talking great nonsense.

SOCRATES: I fancy to myself Heracleitus repeating wise traditions of antiquity as old as the days of

SOCRATES: Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares

them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.

SOCRATES: Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names of Cronos and Rhea to the

ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty much in the doctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of

streams to both of them purely accidental? Compare the line in which Homer, and, as I believe, Hesiod also,

'Ocean, the origin of Gods, and mother Tethys (Il.the line is not found in the extant works of Hesiod.).'

'The fair river of Ocean was the first to marry, and he espoused his sister Tethys, who was his mother's

You see that this is a remarkable coincidence, and all in the direction of Heracleitus.

HERMOGENES: I think that there is something in what you say, Socrates; but I do not understand the

SOCRATES: Well, that is almost selfexplained, being only the name of a spring, a little disguised; for that

which is strained and filtered (diattomenon, ethoumenon) may be likened to a spring, and the name Tethys is

SOCRATES: Then let us next take his two brothers, Poseidon and Pluto, whether the latter is called by that

SOCRATES: Poseidon is Posidesmos, the chain of the feet; the original inventor of the name had been

stopped by the watery element in his walks, and not allowed to go on, and therefore he called the ruler of this

element Poseidon; the epsilon was probably inserted as an ornament. Yet, perhaps, not so; but the name may

have been originally written with a double lamda and not with a sigma, meaning that the God knew many

things (Polla eidos). And perhaps also he being the shaker of the earth, has been named from shaking (seiein),

and then pi and delta have been added. Pluto gives wealth (Ploutos), and his name means the giver of wealth,

which comes out of the earth beneath. People in general appear to imagine that the term Hades is connected

with the invisible (aeides) and so they are led by their fears to call the God Pluto instead.

SOCRATES: In spite of the mistakes which are made about the power of this deity, and the foolish fears

which people have of him, such as the fear of always being with him after death, and of the soul denuded of

the body going to him (compare Rep.), my belief is that all is quite consistent, and that the office and name of

SOCRATES: I will tell you my own opinion; but first, I should like to ask you which chain does any animal

feel to be the stronger? and which confines him more to the same spot,desire or necessity?

SOCRATES: And do you not think that many a one would escape from Hades, if he did not bind those who

SOCRATES: And if by the greatest of chains, then by some desire, as I should certainly infer, and not by

SOCRATES: And therefore by the greatest desire, if the chain is to be the greatest?

SOCRATES: And is any desire stronger than the thought that you will be made better by associating with

SOCRATES: And is not that the reason, Hermogenes, why no one, who has been to him, is willing to come

back to us? Even the Sirens, like all the rest of the world, have been laid under his spells. Such a charm, as I

imagine, is the God able to infuse into his words. And, according to this view, he is the perfect and

accomplished Sophist, and the great benefactor of the inhabitants of the other world; and even to us who are

upon earth he sends from below exceeding blessings. For he has much more than he wants down there;

wherefore he is called Pluto (or the rich). Note also, that he will have nothing to do with men while they are

in the body, but only when the soul is liberated from the desires and evils of the body. Now there is a great

deal of philosophy and reflection in that; for in their liberated state he can bind them with the desire of virtue,

but while they are flustered and maddened by the body, not even father Cronos himself would suffice to keep

SOCRATES: Yes, Hermogenes, and the legislator called him Hades, not from the unseen (aeides)far

HERMOGENES: Very good; and what do we say of Demeter, and Here, and Apollo, and Athene, and

SOCRATES: Demeter is e didousa meter, who gives food like a mother; Here is the lovely one (erate)for

Zeus, according to tradition, loved and married her; possibly also the name may have been given when the

legislator was thinking of the heavens, and may be only a disguise of the air (aer), putting the end in the place

of the beginning. You will recognize the truth of this if you repeat the letters of Here several times over.

People dread the name of Pherephatta as they dread the name of Apollo,and with as little reason; the fear,

if I am not mistaken, only arises from their ignorance of the nature of names. But they go changing the name

into Phersephone, and they are terrified at this; whereas the new name means only that the Goddess is wise

(sophe); for seeing that all things in the world are in motion (pheromenon), that principle which embraces and

touches and is able to follow them, is wisdom. And therefore the Goddess may be truly called Pherepaphe

(Pherepapha), or some name like it, because she touches that which is in motion (tou pheromenon

ephaptomene), herein showing her wisdom. And Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise.

They alter her name into Pherephatta nowadays, because the present generation care for euphony more

than truth. There is the other name, Apollo, which, as I was saying, is generally supposed to have some

SOCRATES: But the name, in my opinion, is really most expressive of the power of the God.

SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain, for I do not believe that any single name could have been better

adapted to express the attributes of the God, embracing and in a manner signifying all four of them,music,

HERMOGENES: That must be a strange name, and I should like to hear the explanation.

SOCRATES: Say rather an harmonious name, as beseems the God of Harmony. In the first place, the

purgations and purifications which doctors and diviners use, and their fumigations with drugs magical or

medicinal, as well as their washings and lustral sprinklings, have all one and the same object, which is to

SOCRATES: And is not Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the absolver from all impurities?

SOCRATES: Then in reference to his ablutions and absolutions, as being the physician who orders them, he

may be rightly called Apolouon (purifier); or in respect of his powers of divination, and his truth and

sincerity, which is the same as truth, he may be most fitly called Aplos, from aplous (sincere), as in the

Thessalian dialect, for all the Thessalians call him Aplos; also he is aei Ballon (always shooting), because he

is a master archer who never misses; or again, the name may refer to his musical attributes, and then, as in

akolouthos, and akoitis, and in many other words the alpha is supposed to mean 'together,' so the meaning of

the name Apollo will be 'moving together,' whether in the poles of heaven as they are called, or in the

harmony of song, which is termed concord, because he moves all together by an harmonious power, as

astronomers and musicians ingeniously declare. And he is the God who presides over harmony, and makes all

things move together, both among Gods and among men. And as in the words akolouthos and akoitis the

alpha is substituted for an omicron, so the name Apollon is equivalent to omopolon; only the second lambda

is added in order to avoid the illomened sound of destruction (apolon). Now the suspicion of this destructive

power still haunts the minds of some who do not consider the true value of the name, which, as I was saying

just now, has reference to all the powers of the God, who is the single one, the everdarting, the purifier, the

mover together (aplous, aei Ballon, apolouon, omopolon). The name of the Muses and of music would seem

to be derived from their making philosophical enquiries (mosthai); and Leto is called by this name, because

she is such a gentle Goddess, and so willing (ethelemon) to grant our requests; or her name may be Letho, as

she is often called by strangersthey seem to imply by it her amiability, and her smooth and easygoing

way of behaving. Artemis is named from her healthy (artemes), wellordered nature, and because of her love

of virginity, perhaps because she is a proficient in virtue (arete), and perhaps also as hating intercourse of the

sexes (ton aroton misesasa). He who gave the Goddess her name may have had any or all of these reasons.

SOCRATES: Son of Hipponicus, you ask a solemn question; there is a serious and also a facetious

explanation of both these names; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to

your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke. Dionusos is simply didous oinon (giver of wine),

Didoinusos, as he might be called in fun,and oinos is properly oionous, because wine makes those who

drink, think (oiesthai) that they have a mind (noun) when they have none. The derivation of Aphrodite, born

HERMOGENES: Still there remains Athene, whom you, Socrates, as an Athenian, will surely not forget;

SOCRATES: And we cannot be wrong in supposing that this is derived from armed dances. For the

elevation of oneself or anything else above the earth, or by the use of the hands, we call shaking (pallein), or

SOCRATES: That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think,

assist in explaining the view of the ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he

meant by Athene 'mind' (nous) and 'intelligence' (dianoia), and the maker of names appears to have had a

singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, 'divine intelligence' (Thou noesis), as

though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God (Theonoa);using alpha as a dialectical variety

for eta, and taking away iota and sigma (There seems to be some error in the MSS. The meaning is that the

word theonoa = theounoa is a curtailed form of theou noesis, but the omitted letters do not agree.). Perhaps,

however, the name Theonoe may mean 'she who knows divine things' (Theia noousa) better than others. Nor

shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral

intelligence (en ethei noesin), and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however, either he or his

successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called her Athene.

SOCRATES: Ephaistos is Phaistos, and has added the eta by attraction; that is obvious to anybody.

HERMOGENES: That is very probable, until some more probable notion gets into your head.

SOCRATES: Ares may be called, if you will, from his manhood (arren) and manliness, or if you please,

from his hard and unchangeable nature, which is the meaning of arratos: the latter is a derivation in every

SOCRATES: And now, by the Gods, let us have no more of the Gods, for I am afraid of them; ask about

HERMOGENES: Only one more God! I should like to know about Hermes, of whom I am said not to be a

true son. Let us make him out, and then I shall know whether there is any meaning in what Cratylus says.

SOCRATES: I should imagine that the name Hermes has to do with speech, and signifies that he is the

interpreter (ermeneus), or messenger, or thief, or liar, or bargainer; all that sort of thing has a great deal to do

with language; as I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of the use of speech, and there is an

oftenrecurring Homeric word emesato, which means 'he contrived'out of these two words, eirein and

mesasthai, the legislator formed the name of the God who invented language and speech; and we may

imagine him dictating to us the use of this name: 'O my friends,' says he to us, 'seeing that he is the contriver

of tales or speeches, you may rightly call him Eirhemes.' And this has been improved by us, as we think, into

Hermes. Iris also appears to have been called from the verb 'to tell' (eirein), because she was a messenger.

HERMOGENES: Then I am very sure that Cratylus was quite right in saying that I was no true son of

SOCRATES: There is also reason, my friend, in Pan being the doubleformed son of Hermes.

SOCRATES: You are aware that speech signifies all things (pan), and is always turning them round and

SOCRATES: Is not the truth that is in him the smooth or sacred form which dwells above among the Gods,

whereas falsehood dwells among men below, and is rough like the goat of tragedy; for tales and falsehoods

have generally to do with the tragic or goatish life, and tragedy is the place of them?

SOCRATES: Then surely Pan, who is the declarer of all things (pan) and the perpetual mover (aei polon) of

all things, is rightly called aipolos (goat herd), he being the twoformed son of Hermes, smooth in his upper

part, and rough and goatlike in his lower regions. And, as the son of Hermes, he is speech or the brother of

speech, and that brother should be like brother is no marvel. But, as I was saying, my dear Hermogenes, let us

HERMOGENES: From these sort of Gods, by all means, Socrates. But why should we not discuss another

kind of Godsthe sun, moon, stars, earth, aether, air, fire, water, the seasons, and the year?

SOCRATES: You impose a great many tasks upon me. Still, if you wish, I will not refuse.

SOCRATES: How would you have me begin? Shall I take first of all him whom you mentioned firstthe

SOCRATES: The origin of the sun will probably be clearer in the Doric form, for the Dorians call him alios,

and this name is given to him because when he rises he gathers (alizoi) men together or because he is always

rolling in his course (aei eilein ion) about the earth; or from aiolein, of which the meaning is the same as

SOCRATES: The word seems to forestall his recent discovery, that the moon receives her light from the sun.

SOCRATES: The two words selas (brightness) and phos (light) have much the same meaning?

SOCRATES: This light about the moon is always new (neon) and always old (enon), if the disciples of

Anaxagoras say truly. For the sun in his revolution always adds new light, and there is the old light of the

SOCRATES: And as she has a light which is always old and always new (enon neon aei) she may very

properly have the name selaenoneoaeia; and this when hammered into shape becomes selanaia.

HERMOGENES: A real dithyrambic sort of name that, Socrates. But what do you say of the month and the

SOCRATES: Meis (month) is called from meiousthai (to lessen), because suffering diminution; the name of

astra (stars) seems to be derived from astrape, which is an improvement on anastrope, signifying the upsetting

SOCRATES: I am at a loss how to explain pur; either the muse of Euthyphro has deserted me, or there is

some very great difficulty in the word. Please, however, to note the contrivance which I adopt whenever I am

SOCRATES: I will tell you; but I should like to know first whether you can tell me what is the meaning of

SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I suspect to be the true explanation of this and several other words?My

belief is that they are of foreign origin. For the Hellenes, especially those who were under the dominion of the

SOCRATES: Why, you know that any one who seeks to demonstrate the fitness of these names according to

the Hellenic language, and not according to the language from which the words are derived, is rather likely to

SOCRATES: Well then, consider whether this pur is not foreign; for the word is not easily brought into

relation with the Hellenic tongue, and the Phrygians may be observed to have the same word slightly

SOCRATES: Any violent interpretations of the words should be avoided; for something to say about them

may easily be found. And thus I get rid of pur and udor. Aer (air), Hermogenes, may be explained as the

element which raises (airei) things from the earth, or as ever flowing (aei rei), or because the flux of the air is

wind, and the poets call the winds 'air blasts,' (aetai); he who uses the term may mean, so to speak, airflux

(aetorroun), in the sense of windflux (pneumatorroun); and because this moving wind may be expressed by

either term he employs the word air (aer = aetes rheo). Aither (aether) I should interpret as aeitheer; this may

be correctly said, because this element is always running in a flux about the air (aei thei peri tou aera reon).

The meaning of the word ge (earth) comes out better when in the form of gaia, for the earth may be truly

called 'mother' (gaia, genneteira), as in the language of Homer (Od.) gegaasi means gegennesthai.

HERMOGENES: There are orai (the seasons), and the two names of the year, eniautos and etos.

SOCRATES: The orai should be spelt in the old Attic way, if you desire to know the probable truth about

them; they are rightly called the orai because they divide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and

the fruits of the earth. The words eniautos and etos appear to be the same, 'that which brings to light the

plants and growths of the earth in their turn, and passes them in review within itself (en eauto exetazei)': this

is broken up into two words, eniautos from en eauto, and etos from etazei, just as the original name of Zeus

was divided into Zena and Dia; and the whole proposition means that his power of reviewing from within is

one, but has two names, two words etos and eniautos being thus formed out of a single proposition.

HERMOGENES: I should like very much to know, in the next place, how you would explain the virtues.

What principle of correctness is there in those charming wordswisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest

SOCRATES: That is a tremendous class of names which you are disinterring; still, as I have put on the lion's

skin, I must not be faint of heart; and I suppose that I must consider the meaning of wisdom (phronesis) and

understanding (sunesis), and judgment (gnome), and knowledge (episteme), and all those other charming

SOCRATES: By the dog of Egypt I have a not bad notion which came into my head only this moment: I

believe that the primeval givers of names were undoubtedly like too many of our modern philosophers, who,

in their search after the nature of things, are always getting dizzy from constantly going round and round, and

then they imagine that the world is going round and round and moving in all directions; and this appearance,

which arises out of their own internal condition, they suppose to be a reality of nature; they think that there is

nothing stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that the world is always full of every sort of

motion and change. The consideration of the names which I mentioned has led me into making this reflection.

SOCRATES: Perhaps you did not observe that in the names which have been just cited, the motion or flux

SOCRATES: Take the first of those which you mentioned; clearly that is a name indicative of motion.

SOCRATES: Phronesis (wisdom), which may signify phoras kai rhou noesis (perception of motion and

flux), or perhaps phoras onesis (the blessing of motion), but is at any rate connected with pheresthai (motion);

gnome (judgment), again, certainly implies the ponderation or consideration (nomesis) of generation, for to

ponder is the same as to consider; or, if you would rather, here is noesis, the very word just now mentioned,

which is neou esis (the desire of the new); the word neos implies that the world is always in process of

creation. The giver of the name wanted to express this longing of the soul, for the original name was neoesis,

and not noesis; but eta took the place of a double epsilon. The word sophrosune is the salvation (soteria) of

that wisdom (phronesis) which we were just now considering. Epioteme (knowledge) is akin to this, and

indicates that the soul which is good for anything follows (epetai) the motion of things, neither anticipating

them nor falling behind them; wherefore the word should rather be read as epistemene, inserting epsilon nu.

Sunesis (understanding) may be regarded in like manner as a kind of conclusion; the word is derived from

sunienai (to go along with), and, like epistasthai (to know), implies the progression of the soul in company

with the nature of things. Sophia (wisdom) is very dark, and appears not to be of native growth; the meaning

is, touching the motion or stream of things. You must remember that the poets, when they speak of the

commencement of any rapid motion, often use the word esuthe (he rushed); and there was a famous

Lacedaemonian who was named Sous (Rush), for by this word the Lacedaemonians signify rapid motion, and

the touching (epaphe) of motion is expressed by sophia, for all things are supposed to be in motion. Good

(agathon) is the name which is given to the admirable (agasto) in nature; for, although all things move, still

there are degrees of motion; some are swifter, some slower; but there are some things which are admirable for

their swiftness, and this admirable part of nature is called agathon. Dikaiosune (justice) is clearly dikaiou

sunesis (understanding of the just); but the actual word dikaion is more difficult: men are only agreed to a

certain extent about justice, and then they begin to disagree. For those who suppose all things to be in motion

conceive the greater part of nature to be a mere receptacle; and they say that there is a penetrating power

which passes through all this, and is the instrument of creation in all, and is the subtlest and swiftest element;

for if it were not the subtlest, and a power which none can keep out, and also the swiftest, passing by other

things as if they were standing still, it could not penetrate through the moving universe. And this element,

which superintends all things and pierces (diaion) all, is rightly called dikaion; the letter k is only added for

the sake of euphony. Thus far, as I was saying, there is a general agreement about the nature of justice; but I,

Hermogenes, being an enthusiastic disciple, have been told in a mystery that the justice of which I am

speaking is also the cause of the world: now a cause is that because of which anything is created; and some

one comes and whispers in my ear that justice is rightly so called because partaking of the nature of the cause,

and I begin, after hearing what he has said, to interrogate him gently: 'Well, my excellent friend,' say I, 'but if

all this be true, I still want to know what is justice.' Thereupon they think that I ask tiresome questions, and

am leaping over the barriers, and have been already sufficiently answered, and they try to satisfy me with one

derivation after another, and at length they quarrel. For one of them says that justice is the sun, and that he

only is the piercing (diaionta) and burning (kaonta) element which is the guardian of nature. And when I

joyfully repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered by the satirical remark, 'What, is there no justice in the

world when the sun is down?' And when I earnestly beg my questioner to tell me his own honest opinion, he

says, 'Fire in the abstract'; but this is not very intelligible. Another says, 'No, not fire in the abstract, but the

abstraction of heat in the fire.' Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says, as Anaxagoras says, that

justice is mind, for mind, as they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and orders all things, and

passes through all things. At last, my friend, I find myself in far greater perplexity about the nature of justice

than I was before I began to learn. But still I am of opinion that the name, which has led me into this

HERMOGENES: I think, Socrates, that you are not improvising now; you must have heard this from some

SOCRATES: Well, then, let me go on in the hope of making you believe in the originality of the rest. What

remains after justice? I do not think that we have as yet discussed courage (andreia),injustice (adikia),

which is obviously nothing more than a hindrance to the penetrating principle (diaiontos), need not be

considered. Well, then, the name of andreia seems to imply a battle;this battle is in the world of existence,

and according to the doctrine of flux is only the counterflux (enantia rhon): if you extract the delta from

andreia, the name at once signifies the thing, and you may clearly understand that andreia is not the stream

opposed to every stream, but only to that which is contrary to justice, for otherwise courage would not have

been praised. The words arren (male) and aner (man) also contain a similar allusion to the same principle of

the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (woman) I suspect to be the same word as goun (birth): thelu (female)

appears to be partly derived from thele (the teat), because the teat is like rain, and makes things flourish

SOCRATES: Yes; and the very word thallein (to flourish) seems to figure the growth of youth, which is

swift and sudden ever. And this is expressed by the legislator in the name, which is a compound of thein

(running), and allesthai (leaping). Pray observe how I gallop away when I get on smooth ground. There are a

good many names generally thought to be of importance, which have still to be explained.

SOCRATES: That may be identified with echonoe, and expresses the possession of mind: you have only to

take away the tau and insert two omichrons, one between the chi and nu, and another between the nu and eta.

SOCRATES: Yes, my dear friend; but then you know that the original names have been long ago buried and

disguised by people sticking on and stripping off letters for the sake of euphony, and twisting and bedizening

them in all sorts of ways: and time too may have had a share in the change. Take, for example, the word

katoptron; why is the letter rho inserted? This must surely be the addition of some one who cares nothing

about the truth, but thinks only of putting the mouth into shape. And the additions are often such that at last

no human being can possibly make out the original meaning of the word. Another example is the word

sphigx, sphiggos, which ought properly to be phigx, phiggos, and there are other examples.

SOCRATES: And yet, if you are permitted to put in and pull out any letters which you please, names will be

SOCRATES: Yes, that is true. And therefore a wise dictator, like yourself, should observe the laws of

SOCRATES: And mine, too, Hermogenes. But do not be too much of a precisian, or 'you will unnerve me of

my strength (Iliad.).' When you have allowed me to add mechane (contrivance) to techne (art) I shall be at the

top of my bent, for I conceive mechane to be a sign of great accomplishment anein; for mekos has the

meaning of greatness, and these two, mekos and anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying,

being now at the top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning of the two words arete (virtue) and

kakia (vice); arete I do not as yet understand, but kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles which

preceded, for all things being in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos ion (going badly); and this evil motion when

existing in the soul has the general name of kakia, or vice, specially appropriated to it. The meaning of kakos

ienai may be further illustrated by the use of deilia (cowardice), which ought to have come after andreia, but

was forgotten, and, as I fear, is not the only word which has been passed over. Deilia signifies that the soul is

bound with a strong chain (desmos), for lian means strength, and therefore deilia expresses the greatest and

strongest bond of the soul; and aporia (difficulty) is an evil of the same nature (from a (alpha) not, and

poreuesthai to go), like anything else which is an impediment to motion and movement. Then the word kakia

appears to mean kakos ienai, or going badly, or limping and halting; of which the consequence is, that the

soul becomes filled with vice. And if kakia is the name of this sort of thing, arete will be the opposite of it,

signifying in the first place ease of motion, then that the stream of the good soul is unimpeded, and has

therefore the attribute of ever flowing without let or hindrance, and is therefore called arete, or, more

correctly, aeireite (everflowing), and may perhaps have had another form, airete (eligible), indicating that

nothing is more eligible than virtue, and this has been hammered into arete. I daresay that you will deem this

to be another invention of mine, but I think that if the previous word kakia was right, then arete is also right.

HERMOGENES: But what is the meaning of kakon, which has played so great a part in your previous

SOCRATES: That is a very singular word about which I can hardly form an opinion, and therefore I must

HERMOGENES: Very likely you are right; but suppose that we leave these words and endeavour to see the

SOCRATES: The meaning of aischron is evident, being only aei ischon roes (always preventing from

flowing), and this is in accordance with our former derivations. For the namegiver was a great enemy to

stagnation of all sorts, and hence he gave the name aeischoroun to that which hindered the flux (aei ischon

SOCRATES: That is more obscure; yet the form is only due to the quantity, and has been changed by

SOCRATES: Let me ask you what is the cause why anything has a name; is not the principle which imposes

SOCRATES: Is not mind that which called (kalesan) things by their names, and is not mind the beautiful

SOCRATES: And are not the works of intelligence and mind worthy of praise, and are not other works

SOCRATES: Physic does the work of a physician, and carpentering does the works of a carpenter?

SOCRATES: Then mind is rightly called beauty because she does the works which we recognize and speak

HERMOGENES: There are the words which are connected with agathon and kalon, such as sumpheron and

SOCRATES: The meaning of sumpheron (expedient) I think that you may discover for yourself by the light

of the previous examples,for it is a sister word to episteme, meaning just the motion (pora) of the soul

accompanying the world, and things which are done upon this principle are called sumphora or sumpheronta,

SOCRATES: Again, cherdaleon (gainful) is called from cherdos (gain), but you must alter the delta into nu

if you want to get at the meaning; for this word also signifies good, but in another way; he who gave the

name intended to express the power of admixture (kerannumenon) and universal penetration in the good; in

forming the word, however, he inserted a delta instead of a nu, and so made kerdos.

SOCRATES: I suppose, Hermogenes, that people do not mean by the profitable the gainful or that which

pays (luei) the retailer, but they use the word in the sense of swift. You regard the profitable (lusiteloun), as

that which being the swiftest thing in existence, allows of no stay in things and no pause or end of motion,

but always, if there begins to be any end, lets things go again (luei), and makes motion immortal and

unceasing: and in this point of view, as appears to me, the good is happily denominated lusitelounbeing

that which looses (luon) the end (telos) of motion. Ophelimon (the advantageous) is derived from ophellein,

meaning that which creates and increases; this latter is a common Homeric word, and has a foreign character.

SOCRATES: The words axumphoron (inexpedient), anopheles (unprofitable), alusiteles (unadvantageous),

SOCRATES: The word blaberon is that which is said to hinder or harm (blaptein) the stream (roun); blapton

is boulomenon aptein (seeking to hold or bind); for aptein is the same as dein, and dein is always a term of

censure; boulomenon aptein roun (wanting to bind the stream) would properly be boulapteroun, and this, as I

HERMOGENES: You bring out curious results, Socrates, in the use of names; and when I hear the word

boulapteroun I cannot help imagining that you are making your mouth into a flute, and puffing away at some

SOCRATES: What is the meaning of zemiodes?let me remark, Hermogenes, how right I was in saying

that great changes are made in the meaning of words by putting in and pulling out letters; even a very slight

permutation will sometimes give an entirely opposite sense; I may instance the word deon, which occurs to

me at the moment, and reminds me of what I was going to say to you, that the fine fashionable language of

modern times has twisted and disguised and entirely altered the original meaning both of deon, and also of

SOCRATES: I will try to explain. You are aware that our forefathers loved the sounds iota and delta,

especially the women, who are most conservative of the ancient language, but now they change iota into eta

or epsilon, and delta into zeta; this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.

SOCRATES: For example, in very ancient times they called the day either imera or emera (short e), which is

SOCRATES: Do you observe that only the ancient form shows the intention of the giver of the name? of

which the reason is, that men long for (imeirousi) and love the light which comes after the darkness, and is

SOCRATES: But now the name is so travestied that you cannot tell the meaning, although there are some

who imagine the day to be called emera because it makes things gentle (emera different accents).

SOCRATES: And zugon (yoke) has no meaning,it ought to be duogon, which word expresses the binding

of two together (duein agoge) for the purpose of drawing;this has been changed into zugon, and there are

SOCRATES: Proceeding in the same train of thought I may remark that the word deon (obligation) has a

meaning which is the opposite of all the other appellations of good; for deon is here a species of good, and is,

nevertheless, the chain (desmos) or hinderer of motion, and therefore own brother of blaberon.

SOCRATES: Not if you restore the ancient form, which is more likely to be the correct one, and read dion

instead of deon; if you convert the epsilon into an iota after the old fashion, this word will then agree with

other words meaning good; for dion, not deon, signifies the good, and is a term of praise; and the author of

names has not contradicted himself, but in all these various appellations, deon (obligatory), ophelimon

(advantageous), lusiteloun (profitable), kerdaleon (gainful), agathon (good), sumpheron (expedient), euporon

(plenteous), the same conception is implied of the ordering or allpervading principle which is praised, and

the restraining and binding principle which is censured. And this is further illustrated by the word zemiodes

(hurtful), which if the zeta is only changed into delta as in the ancient language, becomes demiodes; and this

HERMOGENES: What do you say of edone (pleasure), lupe (pain), epithumia (desire), and the like,

SOCRATES: I do not think, Hermogenes, that there is any great difficulty about themedone is e (eta)

onesis, the action which tends to advantage; and the original form may be supposed to have been eone, but

this has been altered by the insertion of the delta. Lupe appears to be derived from the relaxation (luein)

which the body feels when in sorrow; ania (trouble) is the hindrance of motion (alpha and ienai); algedon

(distress), if I am not mistaken, is a foreign word, which is derived from aleinos (grievous); odune (grief) is

called from the putting on (endusis) sorrow; in achthedon (vexation) 'the word too labours,' as any one may

see; chara (joy) is the very expression of the fluency and diffusion of the soul (cheo); terpsis (delight) is so

called from the pleasure creeping (erpon) through the soul, which may be likened to a breath (pnoe) and is

properly erpnoun, but has been altered by time into terpnon; eupherosune (cheerfulness) and epithumia

explain themselves; the former, which ought to be eupherosune and has been changed euphrosune, is named,

as every one may see, from the soul moving (pheresthai) in harmony with nature; epithumia is really e epi ton

thumon iousa dunamis, the power which enters into the soul; thumos (passion) is called from the rushing

(thuseos) and boiling of the soul; imeros (desire) denotes the stream (rous) which most draws the soul dia ten

esin tes roes because flowing with desire (iemenos), and expresses a longing after things and violent

attraction of the soul to them, and is termed imeros from possessing this power; pothos (longing) is

expressive of the desire of that which is not present but absent, and in another place (pou); this is the reason

why the name pothos is applied to things absent, as imeros is to things present; eros (love) is so called

because flowing in (esron) from without; the stream is not inherent, but is an influence introduced through the

eyes, and from flowing in was called esros (influx) in the old time when they used omicron for omega, and is

called eros, now that omega is substituted for omicron. But why do you not give me another word?

SOCRATES: Doxa is either derived from dioxis (pursuit), and expresses the march of the soul in the pursuit

of knowledge, or from the shooting of a bow (toxon); the latter is more likely, and is confirmed by oiesis

(thinking), which is only oisis (moving), and implies the movement of the soul to the essential nature of each

thingjust as boule (counsel) has to do with shooting (bole); and boulesthai (to wish) combines the notion of

aiming and deliberatingall these words seem to follow doxa, and all involve the idea of shooting, just as

aboulia, absence of counsel, on the other hand, is a mishap, or missing, or mistaking of the mark, or aim, or

SOCRATES: Why yes, the end I now dedicate to God, not, however, until I have explained anagke

(necessity), which ought to come next, and ekousion (the voluntary). Ekousion is certainly the yielding

(eikon) and unresistingthe notion implied is yielding and not opposing, yielding, as I was just now saying,

to that motion which is in accordance with our will; but the necessary and resistant being contrary to our will,

implies error and ignorance; the idea is taken from walking through a ravine which is impassable, and rugged,

and overgrown, and impedes motionand this is the derivation of the word anagkaion (necessary) an agke

ion, going through a ravine. But while my strength lasts let us persevere, and I hope that you will persevere

HERMOGENES: Well, then, let me ask about the greatest and noblest, such as aletheia (truth) and pseudos

(falsehood) and on (being), not forgetting to enquire why the word onoma (name), which is the theme of our

SOCRATES: The word onoma seems to be a compressed sentence, signifying on ou zetema (being for

which there is a search); as is still more obvious in onomaston (notable), which states in so many words that

real existence is that for which there is a seeking (on ou masma); aletheia is also an agglomeration of theia ale

(divine wandering), implying the divine motion of existence; pseudos (falsehood) is the opposite of motion;

here is another ill name given by the legislator to stagnation and forced inaction, which he compares to sleep

(eudein); but the original meaning of the word is disguised by the addition of psi; on and ousia are ion with

an iota broken off; this agrees with the true principle, for being (on) is also moving (ion), and the same may

be said of not being, which is likewise called not going (oukion or ouki on = ouk ion).

HERMOGENES: You have hammered away at them manfully; but suppose that some one were to say to

SOCRATES: One way of giving the appearance of an answer has been already suggested.

SOCRATES: To say that names which we do not understand are of foreign origin; and this is very likely the

right answer, and something of this kind may be true of them; but also the original forms of words may have

been lost in the lapse of ages; names have been so twisted in all manner of ways, that I should not be

surprised if the old language when compared with that now in use would appear to us to be a barbarous

SOCRATES: Yes, very likely. But still the enquiry demands our earnest attention and we must not flinch.

For we should remember, that if a person go on analysing names into words, and enquiring also into the

elements out of which the words are formed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has to

SOCRATES: And at what point ought he to lose heart and give up the enquiry? Must he not stop when he

comes to the names which are the elements of all other names and sentences; for these cannot be supposed to

be made up of other names? The word agathon (good), for example, is, as we were saying, a compound of

agastos (admirable) and thoos (swift). And probably thoos is made up of other elements, and these again of

others. But if we take a word which is incapable of further resolution, then we shall be right in saying that we

SOCRATES: And suppose the names about which you are now asking should turn out to be primary

SOCRATES: Quite so, Hermogenes; all that has preceded would lead to this conclusion. And if, as I think,

the conclusion is true, then I shall again say to you, come and help me, that I may not fall into some absurdity

SOCRATES: I think that you will acknowledge with me, that one principle is applicable to all names,

primary as well as secondarywhen they are regarded simply as names, there is no difference in them.

SOCRATES: All the names that we have been explaining were intended to indicate the nature of things.

SOCRATES: And that this is true of the primary quite as much as of the secondary names, is implied in their

SOCRATES: But the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from the primary.

SOCRATES: Very good; but then how do the primary names which precede analysis show the natures of

things, as far as they can be shown; which they must do, if they are to be real names? And here I will ask you

a question: Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one another, should we

not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body?

SOCRATES: We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of our hands to heaven would mean

lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness would be expressed by letting them drop to the

ground; if we were describing the running of a horse, or any other animal, we should make our bodies and

SOCRATES: We could not; for by bodily imitation only can the body ever express anything.

SOCRATES: And when we want to express ourselves, either with the voice, or tongue, or mouth, the

SOCRATES: Then a name is a vocal imitation of that which the vocal imitator names or imitates?

SOCRATES: Nay, my friend, I am disposed to think that we have not reached the truth as yet.

SOCRATES: Because if we have we shall be obliged to admit that the people who imitate sheep, or cocks,

HERMOGENES: In my opinion, no. But I wish that you would tell me, Socrates, what sort of an imitation

SOCRATES: In the first place, I should reply, not a musical imitation, although that is also vocal; nor, again,

an imitation of what music imitates; these, in my judgment, would not be naming. Let me put the matter as

SOCRATES: But the art of naming appears not to be concerned with imitations of this kind; the arts which

SOCRATES: Again, is there not an essence of each thing, just as there is a colour, or sound? And is there

not an essence of colour and sound as well as of anything else which may be said to have an essence?

SOCRATES: Well, and if any one could express the essence of each thing in letters and syllables, would he

SOCRATES: The musician and the painter were the two names which you gave to the two other imitators.

HERMOGENES: I imagine, Socrates, that he must be the namer, or namegiver, of whom we are in search.

SOCRATES: If this is true, then I think that we are in a condition to consider the names ron (stream), ienai

(to go), schesis (retention), about which you were asking; and we may see whether the namer has grasped the

nature of them in letters and syllables in such a manner as to imitate the essence or not.

SOCRATES: So I should expect. But how shall we further analyse them, and where does the imitator begin?

Imitation of the essence is made by syllables and letters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the letters,

just as those who are beginning rhythm first distinguish the powers of elementary, and then of compound

sounds, and when they have done so, but not before, they proceed to the consideration of rhythms?

SOCRATES: Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first separating the vowels, and then the

consonants and mutes (letters which are neither vowels nor semivowels), into classes, according to the

received distinctions of the learned; also the semivowels, which are neither vowels, nor yet mutes; and

distinguishing into classes the vowels themselves? And when we have perfected the classification of things,

we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the case of letters, there are any classes to which they may

be all referred (cf. Phaedrus); and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whether they have in them

classes as there are in the letters; and when we have well considered all this, we shall know how to apply

them to what they resemblewhether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether there is to be an

admixture of several of them; just, as in painting, the painter who wants to depict anything sometimes uses

purple only, or any other colour, and sometimes mixes up several colours, as his method is when he has to

paint flesh colour or anything of that kindhe uses his colours as his figures appear to require them; and so,

too, we shall apply letters to the expression of objects, either single letters when required, or several letters;

and so we shall form syllables, as they are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at last,

from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large and fair and whole; and as the painter

made a figure, even so shall we make speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other art.

Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried away meaning to say that this was the way

in which (not we but) the ancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to pieces in like

manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the whole subject, and we must see whether the primary, and

also whether the secondary elements are rightly given or not, for if they are not, the composition of them, my

SOCRATES: Well, but do you suppose that you will be able to analyse them in this way? for I am certain

SOCRATES: Shall we leave them, then? or shall we seek to discover, if we can, something about them,

according to the measure of our ability, saying by way of preface, as I said before of the Gods, that of the

truth about them we know nothing, and do but entertain human notions of them. And in this present enquiry,

let us say to ourselves, before we proceed, that the higher method is the one which we or others who would

analyse language to any good purpose must follow; but under the circumstances, as men say, we must do as

SOCRATES: That objects should be imitated in letters and syllables, and so find expression, may appear

ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be avoidedthere is no better principle to which we can look for the

truth of first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, like the tragic poets, who in any

perplexity have their gods waiting in the air; and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that

'the Gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right.' This will be the best contrivance, or perhaps that

other notion may be even better still, of deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are

older than we are; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is the same sort of excuse as

the last; for all these are not reasons but only ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of

words. And yet any sort of ignorance of first or primitive names involves an ignorance of secondary words;

for they can only be explained by the primary. Clearly then the professor of languages should be able to give

a very lucid explanation of first names, or let him be assured he will only talk nonsense about the rest. Do you

SOCRATES: My first notions of original names are truly wild and ridiculous, though I have no objection to

impart them to you if you desire, and I hope that you will communicate to me in return anything better which

SOCRATES: In the first place, the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument expressing all

motion (kinesis). But I have not yet explained the meaning of this latter word, which is just iesis (going); for

the letter eta was not in use among the ancients, who only employed epsilon; and the root is kiein, which is a

foreign form, the same as ienai. And the old word kinesis will be correctly given as iesis in corresponding

modern letters. Assuming this foreign root kiein, and allowing for the change of the eta and the insertion of

the nu, we have kinesis, which should have been kieinsis or eisis; and stasis is the negative of ienai (or eisis),

and has been improved into stasis. Now the letter rho, as I was saying, appeared to the imposer of names an

excellent instrument for the expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter for this purpose: for

example, in the actual words rein and roe he represents motion by rho; also in the words tromos (trembling),

trachus (rugged); and again, in words such as krouein (strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise), thruptein

(break), kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sorts of movements he generally finds an

expression in the letter R, because, as I imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least

at rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order to express motion, just as by the

letter iota he expresses the subtle elements which pass through all things. This is why he uses the letter iota as

imitative of motion, ienai, iesthai. And there is another class of letters, phi, psi, sigma, and xi, of which the

pronunciation is accompanied by great expenditure of breath; these are used in the imitation of such notions

as psuchron (shivering), xeon (seething), seiesthai, (to be shaken), seismos (shock), and are always

introduced by the giver of names when he wants to imitate what is phusodes (windy). He seems to have

thought that the closing and pressure of the tongue in the utterance of delta and tau was expressive of binding

and rest in a place: he further observed the liquid movement of lambda, in the pronunciation of which the

tongue slips, and in this he found the expression of smoothness, as in leios (level), and in the word

oliothanein (to slip) itself, liparon (sleek), in the word kollodes (gluey), and the like: the heavier sound of

gamma detained the slipping tongue, and the union of the two gave the notion of a glutinous clammy nature,

as in glischros, glukus, gloiodes. The nu he observed to be sounded from within, and therefore to have a

notion of inwardness; hence he introduced the sound in endos and entos: alpha he assigned to the expression

of size, and nu of length, because they are great letters: omicron was the sign of roundness, and therefore

there is plenty of omicron mixed up in the word goggulon (round). Thus did the legislator, reducing all things

into letters and syllables, and impressing on them names and signs, and out of them by imitation

compounding other signs. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the truth of names; but I should like to hear what

HERMOGENES: But, Socrates, as I was telling you before, Cratylus mystifies me; he says that there is a

fitness of names, but he never explains what is this fitness, so that I cannot tell whether his obscurity is

intended or not. Tell me now, Cratylus, here in the presence of Socrates, do you agree in what Socrates has

been saying about names, or have you something better of your own? and if you have, tell me what your view

is, and then you will either learn of Socrates, or Socrates and I will learn of you.

CRATYLUS: Well, but surely, Hermogenes, you do not suppose that you can learn, or I explain, any subject

of importance all in a moment; at any rate, not such a subject as language, which is, perhaps, the very greatest

HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but, as Hesiod says, and I agree with him, 'to add little to little' is worth while.

And, therefore, if you think that you can add anything at all, however small, to our knowledge, take a little

SOCRATES: I am by no means positive, Cratylus, in the view which Hermogenes and myself have worked

out; and therefore do not hesitate to say what you think, which if it be better than my own view I shall gladly

accept. And I should not be at all surprized to find that you have found some better notion. For you have

evidently reflected on these matters and have had teachers, and if you have really a better theory of the truth

CRATYLUS: You are right, Socrates, in saying that I have made a study of these matters, and I might

possibly convert you into a disciple. But I fear that the opposite is more probable, and I already find myself

'Illustrious Ajax, son of Telamon, lord of the people, You appear to have spoken in all things much to my

And you, Socrates, appear to me to be an oracle, and to give answers much to my mind, whether you are

inspired by Euthyphro, or whether some Muse may have long been an inhabitant of your breast,

SOCRATES: Excellent Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; I cannot trust myself. And

I think that I ought to stop and ask myself What am I saying? for there is nothing worse than

selfdeceptionwhen the deceiver is always at home and always with youit is quite terrible, and therefore

I ought often to retrace my steps and endeavour to 'look fore and aft,' in the words of the aforesaid Homer.

And now let me see; where are we? Have we not been saying that the correct name indicates the nature of the

CRATYLUS: Yes, Socrates, what you say, as I am disposed to think, is quite true.

SOCRATES: And does this art grow up among men like other arts? Let me explain what I mean: of painters,

SOCRATES: The better painters execute their works, I mean their figures, better, and the worse execute

them worse; and of builders also, the better sort build fairer houses, and the worse build them worse.

SOCRATES: And among legislators, there are some who do their work better and some worse?

SOCRATES: Well, what do you say to the name of our friend Hermogenes, which was mentioned

before:assuming that he has nothing of the nature of Hermes in him, shall we say that this is a wrong

CRATYLUS: I should reply that Hermogenes is not his name at all, but only appears to be his, and is really

SOCRATES: And if a man were to call him Hermogenes, would he not be even speaking falsely? For there

SOCRATES: Are you maintaining that falsehood is impossible? For if this is your meaning I should answer,

CRATYLUS: Why, Socrates, how can a man say that which is not?say something and yet say nothing?

SOCRATES: Your argument, friend, is too subtle for a man of my age. But I should like to know whether

you are one of those philosophers who think that falsehood may be spoken but not said?

SOCRATES: Nor uttered nor addressed? For example: If a person, saluting you in a foreign country, were to

take your hand and say: 'Hail, Athenian stranger, Hermogenes, son of Smicrion'these words, whether

spoken, said, uttered, or addressed, would have no application to you but only to our friend Hermogenes, or

SOCRATES: Well, but that will be quite enough for me, if you will tell me whether the nonsense would be

true or false, or partly true and partly false:which is all that I want to know.

CRATYLUS: I should say that he would be putting himself in motion to no purpose; and that his words

SOCRATES: But let us see, Cratylus, whether we cannot find a meeting point, for you would admit that

SOCRATES: And would you further acknowledge that the name is an imitation of the thing?

SOCRATES: And you would say that pictures are also imitations of things, but in another way?

SOCRATES: I believe you may be right, but I do not rightly understand you. Please to say, then, whether

both sorts of imitation (I mean both pictures or words) are not equally attributable and applicable to the things

SOCRATES: First look at the matter thus: you may attribute the likeness of the man to the man, and of the

SOCRATES: And conversely you may attribute the likeness of the man to the woman, and of the woman to

SOCRATES: That is to say, the mode of assignment which attributes to each that which belongs to them and

SOCRATES: Now then, as I am desirous that we being friends should have a good understanding about the

argument, let me state my view to you: the first mode of assignment, whether applied to figures or to names, I

call right, and when applied to names only, true as well as right; and the other mode of giving and assigning

the name which is unlike, I call wrong, and in the case of names, false as well as wrong.

CRATYLUS: That may be true, Socrates, in the case of pictures; they may be wrongly assigned; but not in

SOCRATES: Why, what is the difference? May I not go to a man and say to him, 'This is your picture,'

showing him his own likeness, or perhaps the likeness of a woman; and when I say 'show,' I mean bring

SOCRATES: And may I not go to him again, and say, 'This is your name'? for the name, like the picture,

is an imitation. May I not say to him 'This is your name'? and may I not then bring to his sense of hearing

the imitation of himself, when I say, 'This is a man'; or of a female of the human species, when I say, 'This is

SOCRATES: That is very good of you, if I am right, which need hardly be disputed at present. But if I can

assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong

assignment of them falsehood. Now if there be such a wrong assignment of names, there may also be a wrong

or inappropriate assignment of verbs; and if of names and verbs then of the sentences, which are made up of

SOCRATES: And further, primitive nouns may be compared to pictures, and in pictures you may either give

all the appropriate colours and figures, or you may not give them allsome may be wanting; or there may be

SOCRATES: And he who gives all gives a perfect picture or figure; and he who takes away or adds also

SOCRATES: In like manner, he who by syllables and letters imitates the nature of things, if he gives all that

is appropriate will produce a good image, or in other words a name; but if he subtracts or perhaps adds a

little, he will make an image but not a good one; whence I infer that some names are well and others ill made.

SOCRATES: Then like other artists the legislator may be good or he may be bad; it must surely be so if our

CRATYLUS: Very true, Socrates; but the case of language, you see, is different; for when by the help of

grammar we assign the letters alpha or beta, or any other letters to a certain name, then, if we add, or subtract,

or misplace a letter, the name which is written is not only written wrongly, but not written at all; and in any of

SOCRATES: I believe that what you say may be true about numbers, which must be just what they are, or

not be at all; for example, the number ten at once becomes other than ten if a unit be added or subtracted, and

so of any other number: but this does not apply to that which is qualitative or to anything which is

represented under an image. I should say rather that the image, if expressing in every point the entire reality,

would no longer be an image. Let us suppose the existence of two objects: one of them shall be Cratylus, and

the other the image of Cratylus; and we will suppose, further, that some God makes not only a representation

such as a painter would make of your outward form and colour, but also creates an inward organization like

yours, having the same warmth and softness; and into this infuses motion, and soul, and mind, such as you

have, and in a word copies all your qualities, and places them by you in another form; would you say that this

SOCRATES: Then you see, my friend, that we must find some other principle of truth in images, and also in

names; and not insist that an image is no longer an image when something is added or subtracted. Do you not

perceive that images are very far from having qualities which are the exact counterpart of the realities which

SOCRATES: But then how ridiculous would be the effect of names on things, if they were exactly the same

with them! For they would be the doubles of them, and no one would be able to determine which were the

SOCRATES: Then fear not, but have the courage to admit that one name may be correctly and another

incorrectly given; and do not insist that the name shall be exactly the same with the thing; but allow the

occasional substitution of a wrong letter, and if of a letter also of a noun in a sentence, and if of a noun in a

sentence also of a sentence which is not appropriate to the matter, and acknowledge that the thing may be

named, and described, so long as the general character of the thing which you are describing is retained; and

this, as you will remember, was remarked by Hermogenes and myself in the particular instance of the names

SOCRATES: Good; and when the general character is preserved, even if some of the proper letters are

wanting, still the thing is signified;well, if all the letters are given; not well, when only a few of them are

given. I think that we had better admit this, lest we be punished like travellers in Aegina who wander about

the street late at night: and be likewise told by truth herself that we have arrived too late; or if not, you must

find out some new notion of correctness of names, and no longer maintain that a name is the expression of a

thing in letters or syllables; for if you say both, you will be inconsistent with yourself.

SOCRATES: Then as we are agreed thus far, let us ask ourselves whether a name rightly imposed ought not

SOCRATES: Enough then of names which are rightly given. And in names which are incorrectly given, the

greater part may be supposed to be made up of proper and similar letters, or there would be no likeness; but

there will be likewise a part which is improper and spoils the beauty and formation of the word: you would

CRATYLUS: There would be no use, Socrates, in my quarrelling with you, since I cannot be satisfied that a

SOCRATES: Then if you admit that primitive or first nouns are representations of things, is there any better

way of framing representations than by assimilating them to the objects as much as you can; or do you prefer

the notion of Hermogenes and of many others, who say that names are conventional, and have a meaning to

those who have agreed about them, and who have previous knowledge of the things intended by them, and

that convention is the only principle; and whether you abide by our present convention, or make a new and

opposite one, according to which you call small great and great smallthat, they would say, makes no

CRATYLUS: Representation by likeness, Socrates, is infinitely better than representation by any chance

SOCRATES: Very good: but if the name is to be like the thing, the letters out of which the first names are

composed must also be like things. Returning to the image of the picture, I would ask, How could any one

ever compose a picture which would be like anything at all, if there were not pigments in nature which

SOCRATES: No more could names ever resemble any actually existing thing, unless the original elements

of which they are compounded bore some degree of resemblance to the objects of which the names are the

SOCRATES: Let me now invite you to consider what Hermogenes and I were saying about sounds. Do you

agree with me that the letter rho is expressive of rapidity, motion, and hardness? Were we right or wrong in

SOCRATES: And that lamda was expressive of smoothness, and softness, and the like?

SOCRATES: And yet, as you are aware, that which is called by us sklerotes, is by the Eretrians called

SOCRATES: But are the letters rho and sigma equivalents; and is there the same significance to them in the

termination rho, which there is to us in sigma, or is there no significance to one of us?

SOCRATES: And what do you say of the insertion of the lamda? for that is expressive not of hardness but of

CRATYLUS: Why, perhaps the letter lamda is wrongly inserted, Socrates, and should be altered into rho, as

you were saying to Hermogenes and in my opinion rightly, when you spoke of adding and subtracting letters

SOCRATES: Good. But still the word is intelligible to both of us; when I say skleros (hard), you know what

SOCRATES: And what is custom but convention? I utter a sound which I understand, and you know that I

SOCRATES: And if when I speak you know my meaning, there is an indication given by me to you?

SOCRATES: This indication of my meaning may proceed from unlike as well as from like, for example in

the lamda of sklerotes. But if this is true, then you have made a convention with yourself, and the correctness

of a name turns out to be convention, since letters which are unlike are indicative equally with those which

are like, if they are sanctioned by custom and convention. And even supposing that you distinguish custom

from convention ever so much, still you must say that the signification of words is given by custom and not

by likeness, for custom may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. But as we are agreed thus far,

Cratylus (for I shall assume that your silence gives consent), then custom and convention must be supposed

to contribute to the indication of our thoughts; for suppose we take the instance of number, how can you ever

imagine, my good friend, that you will find names resembling every individual number, unless you allow that

which you term convention and agreement to have authority in determining the correctness of names? I quite

agree with you that words should as far as possible resemble things; but I fear that this dragging in of

resemblance, as Hermogenes says, is a shabby thing, which has to be supplemented by the mechanical aid of

convention with a view to correctness; for I believe that if we could always, or almost always, use likenesses,

which are perfectly appropriate, this would be the most perfect state of language; as the opposite is the most

imperfect. But let me ask you, what is the force of names, and what is the use of them?

CRATYLUS: The use of names, Socrates, as I should imagine, is to inform: the simple truth is, that he who

SOCRATES: I suppose you mean to say, Cratylus, that as the name is, so also is the thing; and that he who

knows the one will also know the other, because they are similars, and all similars fall under the same art or

science; and therefore you would say that he who knows names will also know things.

SOCRATES: But let us consider what is the nature of this information about things which, according to you,

is given us by names. Is it the best sort of information? or is there any other? What do you say?

CRATYLUS: I believe that to be both the only and the best sort of information about them; there can be no

SOCRATES: But do you believe that in the discovery of them, he who discovers the names discovers also

the things; or is this only the method of instruction, and is there some other method of enquiry and discovery.

CRATYLUS: I certainly believe that the methods of enquiry and discovery are of the same nature as

SOCRATES: Well, but do you not see, Cratylus, that he who follows names in the search after things, and

SOCRATES: Why clearly he who first gave names gave them according to his conception of the things

SOCRATES: And if his conception was erroneous, and he gave names according to his conception, in what

position shall we who are his followers find ourselves? Shall we not be deceived by him?

CRATYLUS: But, Socrates, am I not right in thinking that he must surely have known; or else, as I was

saying, his names would not be names at all? And you have a clear proof that he has not missed the truth, and

the proof isthat he is perfectly consistent. Did you ever observe in speaking that all the words which you

SOCRATES: But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin in error, he may have forced the

remainder into agreement with the original error and with himself; there would be nothing strange in this, any

more than in geometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and invisible flaw in the first part of the

process, and are consistently mistaken in the long deductions which follow. And this is the reason why every

man should expend his chief thought and attention on the consideration of his first principles:are they or

are they not rightly laid down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow. Now I should be

astonished to find that names are really consistent. And here let us revert to our former discussion: Were we

not saying that all things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea of motion is expressed by

SOCRATES: Let us revert to episteme (knowledge) and observe how ambiguous this word is, seeming

rather to signify stopping the soul at things than going round with them; and therefore we should leave the

beginning as at present, and not reject the epsilon, but make an insertion of an iota instead of an epsilon (not

pioteme, but epiisteme). Take another example: bebaion (sure) is clearly the expression of station and

position, and not of motion. Again, the word istoria (enquiry) bears upon the face of it the stopping (istanai)

of the stream; and the word piston (faithful) certainly indicates cessation of motion; then, again, mneme

(memory), as any one may see, expresses rest in the soul, and not motion. Moreover, words such as amartia

and sumphora, which have a bad sense, viewed in the light of their etymologies will be the same as sunesis

and episteme and other words which have a good sense (compare omartein, sunienai, epesthai,

sumpheresthai); and much the same may be said of amathia and akolasia, for amathia may be explained as e

ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the names which in these instances

we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to be framed on the same principle as those which have the best.

And any one I believe who would take the trouble might find many other examples in which the giver of

names indicates, not that things are in motion or progress, but that they are at rest; which is the opposite of

SOCRATES: What of that, Cratylus? Are we to count them like votes? and is correctness of names the voice

of the majority? Are we to say of whichever sort there are most, those are the true ones?

SOCRATES: Certainly not. But let us have done with this question and proceed to another, about which I

should like to know whether you think with me. Were we not lately acknowledging that the first givers of

names in states, both Hellenic and barbarous, were the legislators, and that the art which gave names was the

SOCRATES: Tell me, then, did the first legislators, who were the givers of the first names, know or not

SOCRATES: Let us return to the point from which we digressed. You were saying, if you remember, that he

who gave names must have known the things which he named; are you still of that opinion?

SOCRATES: And would you say that the giver of the first names had also a knowledge of the things which

SOCRATES: But how could he have learned or discovered things from names if the primitive names were

not yet given? For, if we are correct in our view, the only way of learning and discovering things, is either to

SOCRATES: But if things are only to be known through names, how can we suppose that the givers of

names had knowledge, or were legislators before there were names at all, and therefore before they could

CRATYLUS: I believe, Socrates, the true account of the matter to be, that a power more than human gave

things their first names, and that the names which are thus given are necessarily their true names.

SOCRATES: Then how came the giver of the names, if he was an inspired being or God, to contradict

himself? For were we not saying just now that he made some names expressive of rest and others of motion?

SOCRATES: And which, then, did he make, my good friend; those which are expressive of rest, or those

which are expressive of motion? This is a point which, as I said before, cannot be determined by counting

SOCRATES: But if this is a battle of names, some of them asserting that they are like the truth, others

contending that THEY are, how or by what criterion are we to decide between them? For there are no other

names to which appeal can be made, but obviously recourse must be had to another standard which, without

employing names, will make clear which of the two are right; and this must be a standard which shows the

SOCRATES: But if that is true, Cratylus, then I suppose that things may be known without names?

SOCRATES: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can there be of knowing them,

except the true and natural way, through their affinities, when they are akin to each other, and through

themselves? For that which is other and different from them must signify something other and different from

SOCRATES: Well, but reflect; have we not several times acknowledged that names rightly given are the

SOCRATES: Let us suppose that to any extent you please you can learn things through the medium of

names, and suppose also that you can learn them from the things themselveswhich is likely to be the

nobler and clearer way; to learn of the image, whether the image and the truth of which the image is the

expression have been rightly conceived, or to learn of the truth whether the truth and the image of it have

SOCRATES: How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we

may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No; they must be studied

SOCRATES: There is another point. I should not like us to be imposed upon by the appearance of such a

multitude of names, all tending in the same direction. I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really

give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux; which was their sincere but, I think,

mistaken opinion. And having fallen into a kind of whirlpool themselves, they are carried round, and want to

drag us in after them. There is a matter, master Cratylus, about which I often dream, and should like to ask

your opinion: Tell me, whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence?

SOCRATES: Then let us seek the true beauty: not asking whether a face is fair, or anything of that sort, for

all such things appear to be in a flux; but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful.

SOCRATES: And can we rightly speak of a beauty which is always passing away, and is first this and then

that; must not the same thing be born and retire and vanish while the word is in our mouths?

SOCRATES: Then how can that be a real thing which is never in the same state? for obviously things which

are the same cannot change while they remain the same; and if they are always the same and in the same

state, and never depart from their original form, they can never change or be moved.

SOCRATES: Nor yet can they be known by any one; for at the moment that the observer approaches, then

they become other and of another nature, so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state,

SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state

of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless

continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the

change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no

knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that

which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also

exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether

there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many

others say, is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of

his mind in the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in

any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not

believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This

may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily

persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and

CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I have been considering the matter

already, and the result of a great deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.

SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall give me a lesson; but at present,

go into the country, as you are intending, and Hermogenes shall set you on your way.

CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue to think about these things