isguise, 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 fifty-drachma 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 dearly-bought
wisdom of Callias, the Lacedaemonian whose name was 'Rush,' and,
above all, the pleasure which Socrates expresses in his own dangerous
discoveries, which 'to-morrow 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 her