in pursuit of
his vocation as a detector of false knowledge, lights by accident on the
truth. He is guessing, he is dreaming; he has heard, as he says in the
Phaedrus, from another: no one is more surprised than himself at his own
discoveries. And yet some of his best remarks, as for example his
view of the derivation of Greek words from other languages, or of the
permutations of letters, or again, his observation that in speaking of
the Gods we are only speaking of our names of them, occur among these
flights of humour.

We can imagine a character having a profound insight into the nature of
men and things, and yet hardly dwelling upon them seriously; blending
inextricably sense and nonsense; sometimes enveloping in a blaze of
jests the most serious matters, and then again allowing the truth to
peer through; enjoying the flow of his own humour, and puzzling mankind
by an ironical exaggeration of their absurdities. Such were Aristophanes
and Rabelais; such, in a different style, were Sterne, Jean Paul,
Hamann,--writers who sometimes become unintelligible through the
extravagance of their fancies. Such is the character which Plato intends
to depict in some of his dialogues as the Silenus Socrates; and through
this medium we have to receive our theory of language.

There remains a difficulty which seems to demand a more exact answer: In
what relation does the satirical or etymological portion of the dialogue
stand to the serious? Granting all that can be said about the provoking
irony of Socrates, about the parody of Euthyphro, or Prodicus, or
Antisthenes, how does the long catalogue of etymologies furnish any
answer to the question of Hermogenes, which is evidently the main thesis
of the dialogue: What is the truth, or correctness, or principle of
names?

After illustrating the nature of correctness by the analogy of the arts,
and then, as in the Republic, ironically appealing to the authority of
the Homeric poems, Socrates shows that the truth or correctness of names
can only be ascertained by an appeal to etymology. The truth of names
is to be found in the analysis of their elements. But why does he admit
etymologies which are absurd, based on Heracleitean fancies, fourfold
interpretations of words, impossible unions and separations of syllables
and letters?

1. The answer to this difficulty has been already anticipated in part:
Socrates is not a dogmatic teacher, and therefore he puts on this wild
and fanciful d