62 GEEEK PHILOSOPHY. 



tensions of that fraternity. Socrates closes his attack in a manner 

 more direct, by asking the perplexing question, how, if words were 

 first established from a knowledge of things, and a knowledge of things 

 could be only acquired by the study of words, language could ever 

 have been formed at all. Such seems to be the scope of this dialogue. 

 Socrates, in an early part, after throwing out a few whimsical and 

 mystic derivations, hints that he must have a fit of inspiration on him, 

 which he can only attribute to the benefit of a conversation he had 

 recently had with Euthyphro. 1 He derives the word hero from 

 (e'pwe), the love of the gods to mortal damsels or to goddesses ; or 

 else from (eijotiv), the art of speaking, so as to be synonymous with 

 rhetorician or sophist. He brings a confirmation of the doctrine of 

 Heraclitus, from the origin of the word Tethys. He proves Pluto 

 to be the very model of a sophist and a philosopher. He affects to 

 be rather shy of going on with the etymology of divinities, but begs 

 all his auditors will try the mettle of Euthyphro's horses in any other 

 particular. He then says that he thinks the inventors of names, from 

 the difficulty of the subject, became giddy and sea-sick, and as their 

 heads swam round, they fancied all the objects before them in motion. 

 He illustrates this by showing how things remote in nature are related 

 in language, till at last he finds a strange affinity between duty (TO ^eo^), 

 and mischief (TO /3\a/3epov). He observes, that the Greek of his 

 day may probably be as different from the original as from a foreign 

 language ; that where any words cannot be traced with ease, it may 

 be convenient to look upon them as of foreign extraction. Socrates, 

 upon being complimented by Cratylus, repeats that he must have 

 been inspired by Euthyphro, and that he could not help wondering at 

 the wisdom he had himself been uttering. He proceeds in tracing 

 verbal affinities, till he finds guilt and intelligence, intemperance and 

 science, altogether synonymous. Although Socrates is well known 

 to have indulged in great latitude of irony ; although there is scarcely 

 a page throughout the dialogue which does not bear some intimation 

 of banter, and the above passages are obvious, and in a manner casually 

 extracted, almost every annotator has made up his mind to consider 

 the dialogue as a serious and solemn discussion ; and the most ridicu- 

 lous among the etymons have been quoted by grave authors 2 with 

 particular approbation. 



' The Io' is throughout a banter on the imposture and the extravagant 

 pretentious of the rhapsodists, interspersed with some oblique insinua- 

 tions on the inspiration of the poets. 



xut (*.\v ^ u "Ztvxpurtf, T8%,vs ryi fiot $oxt7 ufftftp 0/ ivSu 

 iv ] "Su. xa,} Kinuftoti vt, a 'Epftdytv&s, jMaXwra otv<rw a.<ffo 

 ffpofTftyfruxivcct plot' \u6tv yxp vroXXcc, O.UTU trvvriV, xai fxf 

 xivauvti/it ovv iv6oufftuv ov [tovov TO. UTO, pov l/jt.<xXrt<ru.i <rJ$ daiftovtxs ffo<Qtat, 

 TVS ^vx^s *tii$6w. Cratyl. 396. 



a We need only mention the names of the learned and very ingenious Bryant, 

 and of Taylor, to suggest to our readers the extent to which the tl^uvtia, of Socrates 

 in this dialogue has been misunderstood. 



