of the different Hellenic tribes, in confirmation of his view. Socrates
asks, whether the things differ as the words which represent them differ:--
Are we to maintain with Protagoras, that what appears is? Hermogenes has
always been puzzled about this, but acknowledges, when he is pressed by
Socrates, that there are a few very good men in the world, and a great many
very bad; and the very good are the wise, and the very bad are the foolish;
and this is not mere appearance but reality. Nor is he disposed to say
with Euthydemus, that all things equally and always belong to all men; in
that case, again, there would be no distinction between bad and good men.
But then, the only remaining possibility is, that all things have their
several distinct natures, and are independent of our notions about them.
And not only things, but actions, have distinct natures, and are done by
different processes. There is a natural way of cutting or burning, and a
natural instrument with which men cut or burn, and any other way will
fail;--this is true of all actions. And speaking is a kind of action, and
naming is a kind of speaking, and we must name according to a natural
process, and with a proper instrument. We cut with a knife, we pierce with
an awl, we weave with a shuttle, we name with a name. And as a shuttle
separates the warp from the woof, so a name distinguishes the natures of
things. The weaver will use the shuttle well,--that is, like a weaver; and
the teacher will use the name well,--that is, like a teacher. The shuttle
will be made by the carpenter; the awl by the smith or skilled person. But
who makes a name? Does not the law give names, and does not the teacher
receive them from the legislator? He is the skilled person who makes them,
and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how does the carpenter
make or repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at
the ideal which he has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work
differ, so ought the instruments which make them to differ. The several
kinds of shuttles ought to answer in material and form to the several kinds
of webs. And the legislator ought to know the different materials and
forms of which names are made in Hellas and other countries. But who is to
be the judge of the proper form? The judge of shuttles is the weaver who
uses them; the judge of lyres is the player of the lyre; the judge of ships
is the pilot. And will not the judge who is able to direct the legislator
in his work of naming, be he who knows how to use the names--he who can ask
and answer questions--in short, the dialectician? The pilot directs the
carpenter how to make the rudder, and the dialectician directs the
legislator how he is to impose names; for to express the ideal forms of
things in syllables and letters is not the easy task, Hermogenes, which you
imagine.
'I should be more readily persuaded, if you would show me this natural
correctness of names.'
Indeed I cannot; but I see that you have advanced; for you now admit that
there is a correctness of names, and that not every one can give a name.
But what is the nature of this correctness or truth, you must learn from
the Sophists, of whom your brother Callias has bought his reputation for
wisdom rather dearly; and since they require to be paid, you, having no
money, had better learn from him at second-hand. 'Well, but I have just
given up Protagoras, and I should be inconsistent in going to learn of
him.' Then if you reject him you may learn of the poets, and in particular
of Homer, who distinguishes the names given by Gods and men to the same
things, as in the verse about the river God who fought with Hephaestus,
'whom the Gods call Xanthus, and men call Scamander;' or in the lines in
which he mentions the bird which the Gods call 'Chalcis,' and men
'Cymindis;' or the hill which men call 'Batieia,' and the Gods 'Myrinna's
Tomb.' Here is an important lesson; for the Gods must of course be right
in their use of names. And this is not the only truth about philology
which may be learnt from Homer. Does he not say that Hector's son had two
names--
'Hector called him Scamandrius, but the others Astyanax'?
Now, if the men called him Astyanax, is it not probable that the other name
was conferred by the women? And which are more likely to be right--the
wiser or the less wise, the men or the women? Homer evidently agreed with
the men: and of the name given by them he offers an explanation;--the boy
was called Astyanax ('king of the city'), because his father saved the
city. The names Astyanax and Hector, moreover, are really the same,--the
one means a king, and the other is 'a holder or possessor.' For as the
lion's whelp may be called a lion, or the horse's foal a foal, so the son
of a king may be called a king. But if the horse had produced a calf, then
that would be called a calf. Whether the syllables of a name are the same
or not makes no difference, provided the meaning is retained. For example;
the names of letters, whether vowels or consonants, do not correspond to
their sounds, with the exception of epsilon, upsilon, omicron, omega. The
name Beta has three letters added to the sound--and yet this does not alter
the sense of the word, or prevent the whole name having the value which the
legislator intended. And the same may be said of a king and the son of a
king, who like other animals resemble each other in the course of nature;
the words by which they are signified may be disguised, and yet amid
differences of sound the etymologist may recognise the same notion, just as
the physician recognises the power of the same drugs under different
disguises of colour and smell. Hector and Astyanax have only one letter
alike, but they have the same meaning; and Agis (leader) is altogether
different in sound from Polemarchus (chief in war), or Eupolemus (good
warrior); but the two words present the same idea of leader or general,
like the words Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus, which equally denote a
physician. The son succeeds the father as the foal succeeds the horse, but
when, out of the course of nature, a prodigy occurs, and the offspring no
longer resembles the parent, then the names no longer agree. This may be
illustrated by the case of Agamemnon and his son Orestes, of whom the
former has a name significant of his patience at the siege of Troy; while
the name of the latter indicates his savage, man-of-the-mountain nature.
Atreus again, for his murder of Chrysippus, and his cruelty to Thyestes, is
rightly named Atreus, which, to the eye of the etymologist, is ateros
(destructive), ateires (stubborn), atreotos (fearless); and Pelops is o ta
pelas oron (he who sees what is near only), because in his eagerness to win
Hippodamia, he was unconscious of the remoter consequences which the murder
of Myrtilus would entail upon his race. The name Tantalus, if slightly
changed, offers two etymologies; either apo tes tou lithou talanteias, or
apo tou talantaton einai, signifying at once the hanging of the stone over
his head in the world below, and the misery which he brought upon his
country. And the name of his father, Zeus, Dios, Zenos, has an excellent
meaning, though hard to be understood, because really a sentence which is
divided into two parts (Zeus, Dios). For he, being the lord and king of
all, is the author of our being, and in him all live: this is implied in
the double form, Dios, Zenos, which being put together and interpreted is
di on ze panta. There may, at first sight, appear to be some irreverence
in calling him the son of Cronos, who is a proverb for stupidity; but the
meaning is that Zeus himself is the son of a mighty intellect; Kronos,
quasi koros, not in the sense of a youth, but quasi to katharon kai
akeraton tou nou--the pure and garnished mind, which in turn is begotten of
Uranus, who is so called apo tou oran ta ano, from looking upwards; which,
as philosophers say, is the way to have a pure mind. The earlier portion
of Hesiod's genealogy has escaped my memory, or I would try more
conclusions of the same sort. 'You talk like an oracle.' I caught the
infection from Euthyphro, who gave me a long lecture which began at dawn,
and has not only entered into my ears, but filled my soul, and my intention
is to yield to the inspiration to-day; and to-morrow I will be exorcised by
some priest or sophist. 'Go on; I am anxious to hear the rest.' Now that
we have a general notion, how shall we proceed? What names will afford the
most crucial test of natural fitness? Those of heroes and ordinary men are
often deceptive, because they are patronymics or expressions of a wish; let
us try gods and demi-gods. Gods are so called, apo tou thein, from the
verb 'to run;' because the sun, moon, and stars run about the heaven; and
they being the original gods of the Hellenes, as they still are of the
Barbarians, their name is given to all Gods. The demons are the golden
race of Hesiod, and by golden he means not literally golden, but good; and
they are called demons, quasi daemones, which in old Attic was used for
daimones--good men are well said to become daimones when they die, because
they are knowing. Eros (with an epsilon) is the same word as eros (with an
eta): 'the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;' or
perhaps they were a species of sophists or rhetoricians, and so called apo
tou erotan, or eirein, from their habit of spinning questions; for eirein
is equivalent to legein. I get all this from Euthyphro; and now a new and
ingenious idea comes into my mind, and, if I am not careful, I shall be
wiser than I ought to be by to-morrow's dawn. My idea is, that we may put
in and pull out letters at pleasure and alter the accents (as, for example,
Dii philos may be turned into Diphilos), and we may make words into
sentences and sentences into words. The name anthrotos is a case in point,
for a letter has been omitted and the accent changed; the original meaning
being o anathron a opopen--he who looks up at what he sees. Psuche may be
thought to be the reviving, or refreshing, or animating principle--e
anapsuchousa to soma; but I am afraid that Euthyphro and his disciples will
scorn this derivation, and I must find another: shall we identify the soul
with the 'ordering mind' of Anaxagoras, and say that psuche, quasi phuseche
= e phusin echei or ochei?--this might easily be refined into psyche.
'That is a more artistic etymology.'
After psuche follows soma; this, by a slight permutation, may be either =
(1) the 'grave' of the soul, or (2) may mean 'that by which the soul
signifies (semainei) her wishes.' But more probably, the word is Orphic,
and simply denotes that the body is the place of ward in which the soul
suffers the penalty of sin,--en o sozetai. 'I should like to hear some
more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one of
Zeus.' The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves;
but these are unknown to us. Less true are those by which we propitiate
them, as men say in prayers, 'May he graciously receive any name by which I
call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let them know beforehand
that we are not presuming to enquire about them, but only about the names
which they usually bear. Let us begin with Hestia. What did he mean who
gave the name Hestia? 'That is a very difficult question.' O, my dear
Hermogenes, I believe that there was a power of philosophy and talk among
the first inventors of names, both in our own and in other languages; for
even in foreign words a principle is discernible. Hestia is the same with
esia, which is an old form of ousia, and means the first principle of
things: this agrees with the fact that to Hestia the first sacrifices are
offered. There is also another reading--osia, which implies that 'pushing'
(othoun) is the first principle of all things. And here I seem to discover
a delicate allusion to the flux of Heracleitus--that antediluvian
philosopher who cannot walk twice in the same stream; and this flux of his
may accomplish yet greater marvels. For the names Cronos and Rhea cannot
have been accidental; the giver of them must have known something about the
doctrine of Heracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence in
the words of Hesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, 'the origin of Gods;' and
in the verse of Orpheus, in which he describes Oceanus espousing his sister
Tethys. Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring--to diattomenon
kai ethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the feet, because you
cannot walk on the sea--the epsilon is inserted by way of ornament; or
perhaps the name may have been originally polleidon, meaning, that the God
knew many things (polla eidos): he may also be the shaker, apo tou
seiein,--in this case, pi and delta have been added. Pluto is connected
with ploutos, because wealth comes out of the earth; or the word may be a
euphemism for Hades, which is usually derived apo tou aeidous, because the
God is concerned with the invisible. But the name Hades was really given
him from his knowing (eidenai) all good things. Men in general are
foolishly afraid of him, and talk with horror of the world below from which
no one may return. The reason why his subjects never wish to come back,
even if they could, is that the God enchains them by the strongest of
spells, namely by the desire of virtue, which they hope to obtain by
constant association with him. He is the perfect and accomplished Sophist
and the great benefactor of the other world; for he has much more than he
wants there, and hence he is called Pluto or the rich. He will have
nothing to do with the souls of men while in the body, because he cannot
work his will with them so long as they are confused and entangled by
fleshly lusts. Demeter is the mother and giver of food--e didousa meter
tes edodes. Here is erate tis, or perhaps the legislator may have been
