Dialogue

2002 Craty|              they divide (orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and
2003 Craty|                 anein, I shall be at the summit of my powers, from which
2004 Craty|            omartein, sunienai, epesthai, sumpheresthai); and much the same may
2005 Craty|                  equivalent to sunienai, sumporeuesthai ten psuche, and is a kind
2006 Craty|                 than are wanted; and the superfluous ones are utilized by the
2007 Craty|               and to-day I shall let his superhuman power work and finish the
2008 Craty|                  And this element, which superintends all things and pierces (
2009 Craty|                do we attribute to them a supernatural origin. The law which regulates
2010 Craty|                  a luxury: they were now superseded by prose, which in all succeeding
2011 Craty|              have this quality. It often supersedes the laws of language or
2012 Craty|            language, was constrained to ‘supplement the poor creature imitation
2013 Craty|                 writer is easily able to supply out of his treasure-house.~
2014 Craty|                and fanciful analogies in support of a theory. Etymology in
2015 Craty|                  extravagant. Plato is a supporter of the Onomatopoetic theory
2016 Craty|             these are such as lie on the surface only; after a time they
2017 Craty|                 He would have heard with surprise that languages are the common
2018 Craty|               And I should not be at all surprized to find that you have found
2019 Craty|             arises an obscurity when the surroundings of such a work as the Cratylus
2020 Craty|            remnant of the past which has survived to our day.’)~It can hardly
2021 Craty|                word ‘fittest to survive’ survives, he adds not much to the
2022 Craty|                 dreadful meaning, but is susceptible of at least four perfectly
2023 Craty|               his death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head
2024 Craty|            destruction (apolon). Now the suspicion of this destructive power
2025 Craty|                  quasi Koros (Choreo, to sweep), not in the sense of a
2026 Craty|                up a new kind of harmony, swelling into strains not less majestic
2027 Craty|                  are admirable for their swiftness, and this admirable part
2028 Craty|                 flux of the world to the swimming in some folks’ heads. On
2029 Craty|                 of words such as string, swing, sling, spring, sting, which
2030 Craty|                The picture passes into a symbol, for there would be too
2031 Craty|             minds was narrower and their sympathies and instincts stronger;
2032 Craty|                  there is a want of that sympathy with one another which appears
2033 Craty|               word and the use of a mere synonym for it,—e.g. felicity and
2034 Craty|               rather of analysis than of synthesis, or possibly is a combination
2035 Craty|             languages b becomes p, or d, t, or ch, k; or why two languages
2036 Craty|                Greek grammar, and had no table of the inflexions of verbs
2037 Craty|                  imprinted deeply on the tablets of a nation’s memory by
2038 Craty|              agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,—for all things are in motion,
2039 Craty|            lithou talanteias, or apo tou talantaton einai, signifying at once
2040 Craty|            person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down
2041 Craty|                 had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world
2042 Craty|                either apo tes tou lithou talanteias, or apo tou talantaton einai,
2043 Craty|                  You impose a great many tasks upon me. Still, if you wish,
2044 Craty|               mouthful to dwell upon the taste of it: nor has the speaker
2045 Craty|       philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be
2046 Craty|                emphasized by literature, technically applied in philosophy and
2047 Craty|               edone is e pros ten onrsin teinousa praxis—the delta is an insertion:
2048 Craty|                 Illustrious Ajax, son of Telamon, lord of the people, You
2049 Craty|                appear to find in a Greek temple or statue; nor should his
2050 Craty|              pass away, but are far more tenacious of life than the tribes
2051 Craty|                still a young man. With a tenacity characteristic of the Heracleitean
2052 Craty|               some other uses of it, has tended rather to obscure than explain
2053 Craty|                  multitude of names, all tending in the same direction. I
2054 Craty|              throw aside the sophistical tenet, and listens with a sort
2055 Craty|                the Timaeus, cautious and tentative, when he is speaking of
2056 Craty|                never be filled up. Not a tenth, not a hundredth part of
2057 Craty|                 into groups the roots or terminations of words, we should not
2058 Craty|                 soul: terpsis is apo tou terpnou, and terpnon is properly
2059 Craty|                Phersephone, and they are terrified at this; whereas the new
2060 Craty|             truth of such a word must be tested by some new method. Will
2061 Craty|                well both in money and in thanks; these are the Sophists,
2062 Craty|                recall him to the point’ (Theat.), ‘whither the argument
2063 Craty|                to be partly derived from thele (the teat), because the
2064 Craty|                 thelu is derived apo tes theles, because the teat makes
2065 Craty|               onoma (name), which is the theme of our discussion, has this
2066 Craty|        prepositions and auxiliaries. The theologian would have proved that language
2067 Craty|                Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the origin of
2068 Craty|                  only of metaphysics and theology, but also of natural knowledge.
2069 Craty|                 Gods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men became acquainted
2070 Craty|                 is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language).
2071 Craty|          theounoa is a curtailed form of theou noesis, but the omitted
2072 Craty|                  that the word theonoa = theounoa is a curtailed form of theou
2073 Craty|                  called Gods or runners (Theous, Theontas); and when men
2074      | Thereupon
2075 Craty|         manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen, or
2076 Craty|                 manufacture of garments, thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen,
2077 Craty|                inclination to accept the third view which Socrates interposes
2078 Craty|                 with which we quench our thirst are present: the whole draught
2079 Craty|              were microscopic; twenty or thirty sounds or gestures would
2080 Craty|             primitive antiquity had been thoroughly studied, and the instincts
2081 Craty|                 is of distinguishing the threads of the web.~HERMOGENES:
2082 Craty|             tongue, teeth, lips, palate, throat, mouth, which he may close
2083 Craty|              Hermogenes is very ready to throw aside the sophistical tenet,
2084 Craty|                  great prose writer like Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable
2085 Craty|                 of the mouth: or bronte (thunder), in which the fulness of
2086 Craty|                  and exceptions: grammar ties it up in fixed rules. Language
2087 Craty|          Thereupon they think that I ask tiresome questions, and am leaping
2088 Craty|              omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi, though analogous to ego,
2089 Craty|                 another by ara, de, oun, toinun and the like. In English
2090 Craty|                 English style is thought tolerable in which, except for the
2091 Craty|                   He wanders on from one topic to another, careless of
2092 Craty|                 scholar is indisposed to touch the subject at all.~(2)
2093 Craty|           believe you to be on the right track.~SOCRATES: There is reason,
2094 Craty|                 longius ex altoque sinum trahit,’ can produce a far finer
2095 Craty|                   Proceeding in the same train of thought I may remark
2096 Craty|                are also capable of being trained and improved and engrafted
2097 Craty|                  they have been commonly transferred from matter to mind, and
2098 Craty|              nature, and of nations, the transfiguration of the world in thought,
2099 Craty|                or the Authorized English Translation of the Bible, or again great
2100 Craty|                 all ages. They have been transmitted from one language to another;
2101 Craty|          tradition, it has actually been transmuted. The name of Zeus, who is
2102 Craty|                 understand, but kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles
2103 Craty|                  weather, and has merely transposed the letters of the word
2104 Craty|               put out by the addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter
2105 Craty|                 lest we be punished like travellers in Aegina who wander about
2106 Craty|                   But now the name is so travestied that you cannot tell the
2107 Craty|                able to supply out of his treasure-house.~The fear of tautology has
2108 Craty|                  is omitted here, but is treated of in the Sophist. These
2109 Craty|               style and subject, and the treatment of the character of Socrates,
2110 Craty|            suggesting that the double or treble forms of Perfects, Aorists,
2111 Craty|                  is evident in the words tremble, break, crush, crumble,
2112 Craty|                them?~SOCRATES: That is a tremendous class of names which you
2113 Craty|                 containing within them a trickling stream which deposits debris
2114 Craty|               and see that I do not play tricks with you. For on the same
2115 Craty|                   and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in
2116 Craty|                  you know, says that the Trojan men called him Astyanax (
2117 Craty|                  Homer have imagined the Trojans to be wiser than their wives?~
2118 Craty|                the eternal nature be the truer, is hard to determine. But
2119 Craty|              hardly escapes from being a truism. If by ‘the natural selection’
2120 Craty|                  seems to contain deeper truths about language than any
2121 Craty|           whirlpool themselves, they are trying to drag us after them. For
2122 Craty|              will show that the omega of tupto or the mu of tithemi, though
2123 Craty|               example, Dii philos may be turned into Diphilos), and we may
2124 Craty|              things (pan), and is always turning them round and round, and
2125 Craty|                 the sake of euphony, and twisting and bedizening them in all
2126 Craty|                 goat-herd), he being the two-formed son of Hermes, smooth in
2127 Craty|             carry back our analysis some ultimate elements or roots will remain
2128 Craty|              noun in ‘us’ should end in ‘um;’ nor (b) from any necessity
2129 Craty|               unprofitable), alusiteles (unadvantageous), akerdes (ungainful).~HERMOGENES:
2130 Craty|                 their life comparatively unaltered, or they may meet in a struggle
2131 Craty|                  he appears to be wholly unaware (compare his derivation
2132 Craty|              writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of the
2133 Craty|               relational, of the root or unchanging part of the word and of
2134 Craty|               inhabitant of your breast, unconsciously to yourself.~SOCRATES: Excellent
2135 Craty|               from common sense, remains unconvinced, and on the whole inclines
2136 Craty|             linguistic instinct is still undecayed, of ourselves learning to
2137 Craty|            complications which they have undergone; and we must remember that
2138 Craty|               not truth, or ‘philosophie une langue bien faite.’ At first,
2139 Craty|            SOCRATES: That name is rather unfortunate for Anaxagoras.~HERMOGENES:
2140 Craty|                unadvantageous), akerdes (ungainful).~HERMOGENES: True.~SOCRATES:
2141 Craty|               and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will
2142 Craty|               stream of the good soul is unimpeded, and has therefore the attribute
2143 Craty|     interpretations of words, impossible unions and separations of syllables
2144 Craty|        proportion as men are isolated or united by locality or occupation.
2145 Craty|             which is already commonly or universally known. A word or two may
2146 Craty|             penetrate through the moving universe. And this element, which
2147 Craty|              which he will have least to unlearn. It may be said that the
2148 Craty|                  precisian, or ‘you will unnerve me of my strength (Iliad.).’
2149 Craty|            matter seem to meet, and mind unperceived to herself is really limited
2150 Craty|                to the reader and strikes unpleasantly both on the mind and on
2151 Craty|             nature of a lie, is far from unpleasing to us. The better known
2152 Craty|              furniture, language becomes unpoetical, in expressive, dead.~Grammars
2153 Craty|                 inexpedient), anopheles (unprofitable), alusiteles (unadvantageous),
2154 Craty|                such a view is said to be unproven: it had better therefore
2155 Craty|                 condemn himself to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe
2156 Craty|                 to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe that
2157 Craty|                 the yielding (eikon) and unresisting—the notion implied is yielding
2158 Craty|            philosophy of Heracleitus by ‘unsavoury’ similes—he cannot believe
2159 Craty|                  him Hades, not from the unseen (aeides)—far otherwise,
2160 Craty|        principles of philology which are unsurpassed in any ancient writer, and
2161 Craty|          Thucydides are guilty of taking unwarrantable liberties with grammatical
2162 Craty|                  whether the wise or the unwise are more likely to give
2163 Craty|              banished the cruder sort as unworthy to have a place in great
2164 Craty|                  zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence,
2165 Craty|                 the enquiry? Is Plato an upholder of the conventional theory
2166 Craty|                anastrope, signifying the upsetting of the eyes (anastrephein
2167 Craty|                the same principle of the upward flux (te ano rhon). Gune (
2168 Craty|                 would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness
2169 Craty|           further objection which may be urged equally against all applications
2170 Craty|                  any correction of their usages existing languages might
2171 Craty|                  But they are worse than useless when they outrun experience
2172 Craty|              other country? Will not the user be the man?~HERMOGENES:
2173 Craty|              convention and habit of the users;—such is my view. But if
2174 Craty|                 one another.~It has been usual to depreciate modern languages
2175 Craty|          considering the question of its utility to the beginner in the study.
2176 Craty|             anticipation, like the first utterances of children, probably partook
2177 Craty|                  Language equally abhors vacancy and superfluity. But the
2178 Craty|                 push themselves into the vacant spaces of language and retire
2179 Craty|                them of new meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are
2180 Craty|                  of speech, by which the vagueness of theories is often concealed,
2181 Craty|              SOCRATES: Your faith is not vain; for at this very moment
2182 Craty|                 their manner, would have vainly endeavoured to trace the
2183 Craty|           remember that all knowledge is valuable for its own sake; and we
2184 Craty|             thing be born and retire and vanish while the word is in our
2185 Craty|                  Can the thing beauty be vanishing away from us while the words
2186 Craty|                formation which is not at variance with the first principles
2187 Craty|          contemporaries have appreciably varied their intonation or use
2188 Craty|               the same as poikillein (to variegate), because he variegates
2189 Craty|                  2) The meaning of words varies because ideas vary or the
2190 Craty|                  we possess the power of varying sounds by opening and closing
2191 Craty|                 and variety. The laws of vegetation are invariable, but no two
2192 Craty|              discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to
2193 Craty|                  understood. Many merely verbal questions have been eliminated;
2194 Craty|                 of modern philology. The verses have been repeated as a
2195 Craty|              fixed; there are few if any vestiges of the intermediate links,
2196 Craty|           endusis) sorrow; in achthedon (vexation) ‘the word too labours,’
2197 Craty|                pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect
2198 Craty|              different speakers; but the victory was not distinctly attributed
2199 Craty|                 element is still in full vigour; the Socrates of the Cratylus
2200 Craty|               the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us
2201 Craty|            majestic than those of Homer, Virgil, or Dante.~One of the most
2202 Craty|             pictorial image becomes less vivid, while the association of
2203 Craty|                 to an enlargement of the vocabulary. It is a very early instinct
2204 Craty|               Socrates in pursuit of his vocation as a detector of false knowledge,
2205 Craty|                 in letters which were in vogue among the philologers of
2206 Craty|                the other. It makes three Voices, Active, Passive, and Middle,
2207 Craty|                 it was ‘without form and void.’ During how many years
2208 Craty|                Are we to count them like votes? and is correctness of names
2209 Craty|          distinction be admitted, of the vowel and the consonant, of quantity
2210 Craty|                is not to be taken in the vulgar sense of gainful, but rather
2211 Craty|               perplexity have their gods waiting in the air; and must get
2212 Craty|                 other latent experiences wake up in the mind of the hearer.
2213 Craty|            succeeding one another in our waking thoughts, attaining a greater
2214 Craty|                  elapsed since man first walked upon the earth, and that
2215 Craty|                the watery element in his walks, and not allowed to go on,
2216 Craty|             defended their city and long walls’?~This appears to be a good
2217 Craty|                 travellers in Aegina who wander about the street late at
2218 Craty|       agglomeration of theia ale (divine wandering), implying the divine motion
2219 Craty|                moulded into any form. He wanders on from one topic to another,
2220 Craty|                   and again improving or waning?’~Aristot. Metaph.:—~‘And
2221 Craty|                 the body is the place of ward in which the soul suffers
2222 Craty|              like yours, having the same warmth and softness; and into this
2223 Craty|             Apollo the purifier, and the washer, and the absolver from all
2224 Craty|              medicinal, as well as their washings and lustral sprinklings,
2225 Craty|               which Plato felt at having wasted his time upon ‘Cratylus
2226 Craty|                  had been stopped by the watery element in his walks, and
2227 Craty|              Words are more plastic than wax’ (Rep.), and may be moulded
2228 Craty|                 dialogue which is either weak or extravagant. Plato is
2229 Craty|                 or by the shortening and weakening of them, by the condensation
2230 Craty|           various degrees of strength or weakness, length or shortness, emphasis
2231 Craty|                 of grammar, because they wear the appearance of philosophy
2232 Craty|                have been thinking of the weather, and has merely transposed
2233 Craty|             shuttle?’ And you answer, ‘A weaving instrument.’~HERMOGENES:
2234 Craty|        distinguishing the threads of the web.~HERMOGENES: Yes.~SOCRATES:
2235 Craty|                 him Talantatos (the most weighted down by misfortune), disguised
2236 Craty|                  called from her healthy well-balanced nature, dia to artemes,
2237 Craty|              from her healthy (artemes), well-ordered nature, and because of her
2238 Craty|          language as of any other. A few well-selected questions may lead the student
2239 Craty|               grew less and less as time went on. To the ear which had
2240 Craty|                  falling short of Plato. Westphal holds that there are three
2241      | Whereupon
2242 Craty|               majority? Are we to say of whichever sort there are most, those
2243 Craty|            inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating Protagoras and
2244 Craty|                   and some one comes and whispers in my ear that justice is
2245      | whither
2246 Craty|                in so far as they furnish wider conceptions of the different
2247 Craty|                  fierceness and mountain wildness of his hero’s nature.~HERMOGENES:
2248 Craty|                   such as that of Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing
2249 Craty|                  Letho is named from her willingness (ethelemon), or because
2250 Craty|              aetorroun), in the sense of wind-flux (pneumatorroun); and because
2251 Craty|               orizousin) the summers and winters and winds and the fruits
2252 Craty|          supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess
2253 Craty|                 signifies (semainei) her wishes.’ But more probably, the
2254 Craty|               them to be invented by the wit of man. With few exceptions,
2255 Craty|           Trojans to be wiser than their wives?~HERMOGENES: To be sure.~
2256 Craty|           imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the solitude of
2257 Craty|                us to grasp the power and wonder of languages, and is very
2258 Craty|                  of the alphabet shows a wonderful insight into the nature
2259 Craty|              world below—all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You
2260 Craty|               Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; I cannot
2261 Craty|                thin or thick, of flaxen, woollen, or other material, ought
2262 Craty|              powerful and sudden, others working slowly in the course of
2263 Craty|                 them, and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how
2264 Craty|                 the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere intersected
2265 Craty|            instances we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to
2266 Craty|                 aim of the author. Plato wrote satires in the form of dialogues,
2267 Craty|                 as psuchron (shivering), xeon (seething), seiesthai, (
2268 Craty|                   and my intention is to yield to the inspiration to-day;
2269 Craty|                 so.~SOCRATES: And zugon (yoke) has no meaning,—it ought
2270      | yours
2271 Craty|                  always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei).
2272 Craty|                 Yes;—meaning the same as zetein (to enquire).~SOCRATES:
2273 Craty|               sentence, signifying on ou zetema (being for which there is
2274 Craty|                  di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei). There is an irreverence,