Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

which material things acquired their appellations, but that we must look in the latter case to the appellations of the various species of the general and eternal. Now this is again manifestly said in earnest, inasmuch as these names do certainly form a moiety of the core of language, as this core also, like the Greek, divided into nouns and verbs. But when again the dialogue pursues this further, and investigates the natural correctness of nouns, first in the names of the gods, which are so treated that we cannot well say, that as proper names, they would not have belonged rather to the first section, and then in those of the heavenly bodies and their relations, the elements, the virtues, the various other phænomena of the mind, and finally the poles of all thought and knowledge itself, all this, when thus taken in the gross, is manifestly jest. We infer this not only from the violent method of dealing with the words, from the total neglect of the distinction between fundamental and inflected syllables, and the commutation and transposition of letters, so that oftentimes a scarcely similar sound is produced; as well as from the unlimited share ascribed to the desire of embellishment in the then construction of words, so that, as Socrates allows, something was introduced from the very first in order to conceal the meaning, and consequently in entire contradiction to the supposed nature of language; but we recognize the jesting spirit even far more in the expressions of Socrates himself, when he ridicules this species of wisdom as an inspiration quite foreign to him, which he would follow to-day, but to-morrow would purify himself of; when by the same process he educes a similar sense out of opposite words, and shows consequently that it destroys

itself; when he appeals in one place to barbarian origin or the destructive effects of time, and subsequently declares this himself to be the excuse of one who would avoid giving any regular account. But this

mass of joking leads yet again to something perfectly serious, to the distinction, I mean, between fundamental and derivative words, to the investigation of what is the proper object of representation in language, to the distinction between the imitative and musical use of the voice, and to the illustration of how in conformity with it the original significancy must be looked for in the letters. And this is certainly serious, because Plato makes Socrates sketch a theory on purpose, perfectly corresponding to those dialectic ground-forms which he has already brought forward in the Phædrus. But the manner again in which this is illustrated, by way of example, in particular letters, and their meaning investigated, can hardly be taken for serious; for the way in which Socrates sets to work in this must appear very frivolous to any one, who, however superficially, balances the problems and solutions against one another, as our annotations will do in the particular passages; nay, even to Socrates himself, he assures us, his own method has a very vacant and ridiculous air. And should any one be inclined to think that all we find here wears such a harlequin and strange dress, and is intentionally made ridiculous only because it is intended to prove by violence that the doctrine of Heraclitus lies at the bottom of the formation of language, let him not disguise from himself the fact, that in the few examples in which an Eleatic style of thought is intended to appear there is quite as great an accumulation of all that is random and vague. But if

as

there is any one to whom the grounds suggested for forming a judgment do not otherwise appear sufficient, we would recommend him, in order to decide accurately between jest and earnest, simply and exclusively to follow Euthyphro, and when he is a party to the sport, and the wisdom is referred to him, then let the reader consider that he is certainly in the province of jest. Moreover, from this the serious parts also will admit of being recognized, and we shall discover where they begin and how far, inaccessible to that pleasant spirit, they reach. And in whatever light we regard the dialogue we must inevitably arrive at the same conclusion, that Plato only marked out the particular details of that discussion. upon language with a view of bringing forward a comedy, or whatever may be the meaning of it, but that all that is general is to be taken quite as seriously as the core of every Platonic dialogue. And this consideration must at once make every not unintelligent reader of Plato inclined to leave those details to rest at present upon their own merits as collateral matter, intelligible perhaps only from the consideration of the whole, and to begin the understanding of that whole, if it is to be rightly estimated, at the other end; and to suspect in the Cratylus a similar arrangement to that in the Euthydemus, where likewise an ironical whole and a serious investigation are strangely interwoven with one another.

Now if we consider apart the serious subjectmatter of the work, the investigation into the nature of language ceases at once to 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

GG

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 herc 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 worse 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

*Crat. p. 429. B.

ΣΩ. Ουδὲ δὴ ὄνομα, ὡς ἔοικε, δοκεῖ σοι κεῖσθαι τὸ μὲν χεῖρον, τὸ δὲ ἄμεινον ;

KP. Οὐ δῆτα. κ.

τ. λ.

Where Socrates' argument goes to appwv toivov, ŵ yevvaïe,

prove the affirmative.-P. 432. D. he says,

ἔα καὶ ὄνομα τὸ μὲν ἐν κεῖσθαι, τὸ δὲ μή . . .

« EdellinenJatka »