Now if we consider apart the serious subject-matter of the work, the investigation into the nature of language ceases at once to appear alone entitled to that character, although it certainly presents itself most obtrusively and in a manner sufficiently strange. For the subjects of Platonic investigation generally occur in several works, and after they have been once discussed, they are subsequently viewed once or twice again from different points, or otherwise put into a clearer light, until, as being made perfectly clear, they are taken up into the great and all-comprehending work. But we have no trace whatever that this thread, of which certainly it cannot be said that it is here spun to the end, was ever again continued; and had fate grudged us the possession of this one dialogue, the subject would have been totally omitted, and we should be obliged to say that Plato’s position relatively to language was that of a genuine artist; for that he understood excellently well how to use it, and to construct it for himself after a method of his own, but had nothing to say upon the subject. And this indeed even now, notwithstanding that this loss has not occurred to us, is the opinion of many persons, though it is far from being our own. For if we take notice of the manner in which he grapples to the opinion of Hermogenes, and instead of something compiled at random and confirmed only by convention, considers language as a thing which followed in its origin and process of formation an inward necessity—as a type of an idea, and as an instrument of art to be criticized and improved by the artist who uses it; and then of the way in which he compares the combination and connection of sounds with the connection and combined relations of things, and regards the two as systems running collaterally with and corresponding to one another, and which are therefore united in a higher; and how he recommends us to seek, in the physiological quality of sounds, the ground of all that is significant in language, not so much as imitation of the audible but as expression of the nature of things;—all this considered, we shall be obliged to confess that this is some of the most profound and most important matter that has ever been delivered upon the subject of language.

It is indeed true that what Socrates adduces in opposition to Cratylus, when he speaks of the necessity of assuming the presence in language of a capricious element, intelligible only upon the supposition of some kind of convention, may appear of a weaker character, and even in the light only of a subterfuge resorted to by one who was incapable of giving a satisfactory account of the matter; but it is equally certain that it only appears so because it is more difficult to understand, and required continuation to complete what is only delivered in imperfect hints. For when it is considered that this whole proof proceeds upon the principle that a better and a worse¹ enters into the affixing of appellatives, and this not so that the better exists in one and the worse in another language, inasmuch as every language, beginning with the first elements of speech, is something essentially peculiar, but that each appears in the same from a comparison of the variations which take place within the substance of every one, and consequently with reference to their growth and progress;—it will be seen that the capricious element in words according to Plato’s peculiar principles as to imperfect existence, must vanish as existing merely in appearance, provided only we proceed to draw further deductions, in Plato’s own spirit, from what he says upon the relation of language to knowledge. In doing this, however, we shall be obliged to leave it undecided whether he establishes what he here says preliminarily only, with a view to leaving the reader to find out the further consequences himself, or whether he did in fact only see thus far and no farther upon these principles; as it must indeed be confessed that the origin of the positive element in that which is naturally necessary is not quite so easily seen in the case of less known objects. And this may be the part in which, from fault of the times, Plato has not perhaps gone quite so far as a way would lead which we might be able to point out to him, though his deficiency in this respect cannot be considered as in any way unworthy of his genius. But whatever may be the case with him, thus much is clear, as every unprejudiced person must see, that it is only by removal of the opposition between the opinion of Cratylus and that of Hermogenes that Plato’s view of language is intended to come out, though the manner and means of effecting that removal are only just pointed out; and Plato himself seems to have considered further enlargement of the subject, according to these views, as something on the one side as no longer possible, and on the other as not yet so.

The more however this subject appears to be only sketched, and the discussion of it left altogether incomplete, the less claim it has, according to Plato’s method, to be considered the subject of an exclusive work. We should rather be led to believe that it is started only by way of a kind of example, something like the art of speaking in the Phædrus. Hence then we must look further for a ground and purpose of the dialogue in other relations, and institute a supplementary inquiry as to whether there does not exist in the work we are considering something beyond what has hitherto come out that may afford instruction upon this point. And the attentive reader will soon discover what he seeks. For although the speculation into the theory of language is not brought to a successful termination, we find notwithstanding, in the very first outlines of it, thus much at all events clearly enunciated as an immediate consequence; that the relation of language to knowledge is such, that, even assuming for a moment the divine origin of the former, it is in every way impossible for it to be regarded as the source of the latter, whether original and the object of discovery, or derived and the subject of instruction, and that if a dependent relation is to obtain between them, language must be considered rather as a product of knowledge, and existing conditionally through it. Now if we consider at the same time the use that is made of etymology in the ironical part, in order to justify from language the Heraclitic doctrine, so that Socrates even seriously allows that this tendency may be pointed out in language, and again the manner in which the whole is pervaded throughout by a continuous. polemical spirit in opposition to that doctrine, with the expression of which the dialogue concludes as it begun, assuming the existence of something constant and self-independent,—we have unquestionably discovered a point capable of spreading a sufficient light over the whole, inasmuch as it lays before us such a connection of that whole with the preceding dialogues, that the same glance enables us clearly to determine the purport of the work, and also the place which it is to occupy in the series of the productions of Plato.

For the caution which is intended to warn us, that language cannot of itself lead to knowledge, and that from it alone it is impossible to decide which of two opposite views is the true one or the false, is manifestly of a polemical character, and supposes that such a process had been on some occasions applied; and these polemics essentially belong to that series of efforts to establish the reality of knowledge, and its eternity and impersonality, in which we see Plato engaged during this second period. Neither does it seem to be a very difficult question where we are to look for this process. For as on the one hand, even among the disciples of Socrates, collaterally with the true philosophy, mere empiricism, the offspring of lower modes of thought, soon got the upper hand again, and in the Gorgias and Theætetus Plato especially wages war against this, when he shows that the idea of the good is not abstracted from the feeling of the pleasant, and that knowledge is not derived from sensuous perception or even from right conception, so on the other side a system of unmeaning play again got the upper hand among them—the play with the equally unsubstantial and exhausted forms of philosophy, which scarcely preserves any subject to which it can attach itself except language. This abuse can be imputed to one only of the two opposite extremes which Plato always has in view, that, I mean, involved in the doctrines of the Ionic Philosophy; it must however, when taken in connection with this, present a twofold appearance. One, when viewed with the apprehension of the scepticism of these doctrines as to the essentiality of knowledge, and that it abused the forms of language in order to exhibit everything as in a state of inextricable confusion and inconstant variation, which is precisely the theory which Plato exposes in its nothingness in the Euthydemus, and of which the sophistical philosophy, again reviving in the Megarian and Eretrian schools, has to bear the burden and the blame. Another, when it is remembered that these doctrines themselves could be dogmatic, and hence felt no compunction in attempting to prove, when they could, that even language, though it may appear to grasp and keep hold of its objects, does nevertheless, in this process of affixing appellations, itself recognise, by the method pursued, the ceaseless flux of all things. But at this point we seem to be almost deserted by history. For it does not appear that language was used in any particular manner as a means for the foundation of knowledge, or as a canon whereby to judge of it, until we meet with such an application in the exaggerated grammatical tendency of the Stoic school; and it will scarcely be thought necessary to pursue this solitary trace. But, that we may not lose ourselves deeper in details and in obscure hints, when it is once remembered how largely the natural philosophy of the Stoics borrowed from Heraclitus; how Antisthenes is to be regarded as the founder not only of the Cynics but also of the Stoics, only that these latter reverted more to Plato, from whom the former, seduced by personal differences, had separated himself more widely probably than their scientific views had rendered necessary; and when it is considered further that Antisthenes is supposed to have expounded the work of Heraclitus, without however mentioning by name any particular work upon the subject, while, on the other hand, several works of Heraclitus occur which manifestly have language for their subject;—we can scarcely feel a doubt as to who is the real object of these polemics. And hence also it is very soon explained, why, notwithstanding that the immediate object of the dialogue could only be so imperfectly discussed, the Cratylus nevertheless became an exclusive whole, and took the precise form in which we now find it. For the relation of language to knowledge, which constitutes its principal subject, manifestly rests entirely upon the doctrine adduced in the Theætetus, about the distinction between knowledge and right conception. For language, as it is actually given, stands here upon exactly the same ground with conception, or rather is in reality one and the same with it. Thus words are signs and types of things, and in them a closer or more indistinct, a more or less pure, a clearer or more obscure impress, is possible—thus in both error has its province traced out by confusion or exchange of relation, and both even coincide in this respect, that the attention is drawn to numbers as a particular object of consideration. Every one however who remembers the position which this distinction occupies in the Theætetus, will allow that the essential matter of the Cratylus could by no means have been taken into that dialogue as a digression. And so much the less because Plato, in order to say what was of most importance, required the result of the Menon, which we find therefore here supposed, that knowledge does not, properly speaking, pass by transference from one to another, but that discovery and learning are the same things in all men, namely, remembrance. In like manner the relation to be established between language and knowledge connects itself further and more particularly with polemics, against the strange and all-confusing denial of the possibility of error in the province of conception; polemics which we find begun in the Theætetus, and continued in the Euthydemus. If, then, we remember moreover the temptation which presented itself to overwhelm the hostile Antisthenes with a whole body of ridicule, we see the Cratylus form itself as it were into an exclusive whole, out of the Theætetus and Euthydemus, and by means of its character, as well as what is connected with the immediate subject, secure its place in this series of the Platonic works; for it is as little devoted to personal polemics as the Euthydemus. Moreover it contains not only supplementary matter and illustrations of this dialogue and the Theætetus—as, for example, just at the beginning the decisively repeated declaration in opposition to Protagoras, from a point at which, in order to continue the dialogue, Plato had himself opened a loophole for the philosopher to escape through; and immediately thereupon the manner in which he describes the peculiar nature of the sophistical philosophy exposed in the Euthydemus; and further on the distinction, which also in the Theætetus is allowed to drop, between a whole and a collective mass, is explained from the opposition between quality and quantity; and there are many particulars of the same kind. Quite as little can it be said that our dialogue only states the unity of the theoretical and practical as we have already found it stated in the Theætetus and Gorgias, and their relation to one another—although this too is done partly by particular allusions in the etymological part, which remind us very strongly of the Gorgias, partly by the manner in which the reality of the Beautiful and Good is here also at last connected with that of knowledge.—But besides all this, the Cratylus also advances the scientific object of Plato in the same way as the character of this series carries it along with it. Two things especially are here to be taken into account. First of all, the doctrine of the relation of Types to the Archetypes; where in fact language and its relation to things is only to be considered as an example, but one by which Plato did really intend to throw out a first notice of the doctrine of ideas and their relation to the material world, which is immediately preparatory to the Sophist. Secondly, as in the Euthydemus the kingly art, the object of which can only be absolutely the good, is set up as that which exists for itself in the identity of use and production, while all other arts, the object of which, whether as producing or using, is only partial, are merely its instruments and subordinate agents; so, on the other hand, dialectics are here represented as the art whose object is absolutely the true in the identity of knowledge and external expression, while every thing else connected with it, and conception and language especially, is only its instrument. Now this parallel visibly draws the connection between those apparent opposites closer together; and by being placed a step higher we at once more clearly perceive the philosopher on the summit, uniting in himself the dialectician and the statesman. Nay, in this respect the Cratylus is in a peculiar manner placed in connection with the Gorgias by means of the strange and obscure analogy, and which is certain only intelligible upon the view we have taken of the whole—that analogy which is here set up between law and language, inasmuch as it is repeatedly said that language exists in virtue of a law, so that the law-giver and word-maker are viewed almost as identical. This is introduced by the circumstance, that as, according to the saying of Hermogenes, language is to be regarded only as the work of caprice and convention; though it must be remembered that convention, even though tacit, and law, merged into one another more among the Hellenes than among us; so likewise the sophists and the school of Aristippus explained even moral ideas to be the offspring of caprice, and only introduced from without by the ordinances of the law-giver, and even by means of language itself. Plato, on the contrary, discovers in the moral judgment the same inward necessity that he does in language, though this necessity cannot be outwardly expressed in either, purely and perfectly, except by one profoundly acquainted with the nature of each. And if we pursue this indication, a further application will reveal itself for what is said upon the subject of the capricious element which enters into the works of the legislator.

Now as to the etymological part, which is for the most part ironical,—although in this likewise much that is seriously meant may be found dispersed, if not in the etymologies, at all events in the explanations of them,—we should still be best able to judge how merciful and just, or how unmerciful and exaggerated, the satirical imitation is, if the works of Antisthenes that are mentioned, especially those about the use of words, had been preserved to us, where we should also probably meet with Euthyphro again, and obtain some information about him. For if he is not a person taken out of some satirized dialogue, it is impossible to conceive how he comes here. And, what is most important, we should then be better able to see what other allusions may be here further concealed. For it is certain that what we find in the dialogue is not all directed at the one person who is the object of the satire, but, as we have seen also in the Euthydemus, a large share is intended to be devoted to self-defence. This is here the more evident, as the playful manner in which Plato sometimes used language may have found censurers enough, especially among those who were in the habit of availing themselves of much not very different from this play in proof of their opinions. And in this point of view too we should naturally expect to see this play here pushed to extremities, and to find our dialogue indulging in the very last degree of epideixis as it were in this kind; as strange explanations brought in from elsewhere are outdone in it by still stranger of its own.

And this etymological part has been the crux of the translator, and it was matter of long and perplexing deliberation with him how to extricate himself from the difficulty. The introduction generally of the Greek words appeared an intolerable expedient, and it seemed better to let the Socrates who was speaking German once for all derive German from German. On the other hand, it was not possible to do this with the proper names—in these it was necessary to preserve the original tongue; and since both methods now stand in company with one another, the reader will at all events have occasion to congratulate himself that no one exclusively pervades the whole. But as that which elsewhere occurs only in detached particulars comes out here in a mass, so on the other hand it cannot be denied that the art of dialogic composition goes somewhat back; and when we compare the Cratylus with the Euthydemus, with which it stands most nearly connected in so many respects, we shall find that in the latter the ironical and the serious parts are interwoven far more beautifully with one another. Here, on the contrary, Plato appears almost overcome by the superabundance of philological jest, so harsh and abrupt are the transitions in the latter part of the dialogue; sometimes, after short digressions, he turns back to what has gone before, as if it were something new rather than what had been already said—sometimes he does bring forward matter actually new, but for which no preparation whatever has been made and which is harshly subjoined to what immediately precedes, in a manner that might almost lead us to doubt, if we were to consider such passages as these exclusively, whether it is Platonic. This is particularly noticeable at the point from which the signification of the letters is explained. But the whole will admit no manner of doubt of its genuineness, and the most that can be said is, that Plato after that point returned to his subject with no great inclination to do so, and sketched as slightly as possible what still remained to be said. Of the persons of the dialogue, there is I fear but little to be said: Hermogenes is also known from Xenophon as a not rich brother of the rich Callias; Cratylus is mentioned not only as a pupil of Heraclitus, but also as a teacher of Plato in his youth—a piece of information which does indeed rest upon the authority of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, but has fortunately too little influence upon our dialogue to render it necessary for us to test it more accurately in this place.

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Footnotes

1. Crat. p. 429. B. ΣΩ. ’Οὐδὲ δή ὄνομα, ὡς ἔοικε, δοκεῖ σοι κεῖσθαι τὸ μὲν χεῖρον, τὸ δὲ ἄμεινον; ΚΡ. Οὐ δῆτα. κ. τ. λ. Where Socrates’ argument goes to prove the affirmative[?]P. 432. D. he says, Θαρρῶν τοίνυν, ὦ γενναῖε, ἐα καὶ ὄνομα τὸ μὲν ἓν κεῖσθαι, τὸ δὲ μή … ↩