heir 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 things
yourself.'

*****

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
anticipations of his genius.

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 inve