INTRODUCTION.
Cratylus.
Analysis.
The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the
student of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection
of style and metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked
with the best of the Platonic writings, there has been an uncer-
tainty about the motive of the piece, which interpreters have
hitherto not succeeded in dispelling. We need not suppose that
Plato used words in order to conceal his thoughts, or that he
would have been unintelligible to an educated contemporary. In
the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also find a difficulty in deter-
mining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote satires in the
form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of other satirical
writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may
be assigned for this obscurity : ist, the subtlety and allusiveness
of this species of composition ; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a
state of life and literature which has passed away. A satire is
unmeaning unless we can place ourselves back among the persons
and thoughts of the age in which it was written. Had the treatise
of Antisthenes upon words, or the speculations of Cratylus, or some
other Heracleitean of the fourth century b.c, on the nature of
language been preserved to us; or if we. had lived at the time,
and been ' rich enough to attend the fifty-drachma course of Pro-
dicus,' we should have understood Plato better, and many points
which are now attributed to the extravagance of Socrates' humour
would have been found, like the allusions of Aristophanes in the
Clouds, to have gone home to the sophists and grammarians of
the day.
For the age was very busy with philological speculation ; and many questions were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the
