nted that which he is. But
this would have been an 'argument too subtle' for Socrates, who rejects
the theological account of the origin of language 'as an excuse for not
giving a reason,' which he compares to the introduction of the 'Deus ex
machina' by the tragic poets when they have to solve a difficulty; thus
anticipating many modern controversies in which the primary agency
of the divine Being is confused with the secondary cause; and God is
assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a lacuna in human
knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)

Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art
enters into language. The creative power abating is supplemented by a
mechanical process. 'Languages are not made but grow,' but they are made
as well as grow; bursting into life like a plant or a flower, they
are also capable of being trained and improved and engrafted upon one
another. The change in them is effected in earlier ages by musical and
euphonic improvements, at a later stage by the influence of grammar
and logic, and by the poetical and literary use of words. They develope
rapidly in childhood, and when they are full grown and set they may
still put forth intellectual powers, like the mind in the body, or
rather we may say that the nobler use of language only begins when the
frame-work is complete. The savage or primitive man, in whom the natural
instinct is strongest, is also the greatest improver of the forms of
language. He is the poet or maker of words, as in civilised ages the
dialectician is the definer or distinguisher of them. The latter calls
the second world of abstract terms into existence, as the former has
created the picture sounds which represent natural objects or processes.
Poetry and philosophy--these two, are the two great formative principles
of language, when they have passed their first stage, of which, as
of the first invention of the arts in general, we only entertain
conjecture. And mythology is a link between them, connecting the visible
and invisible, until at length the sensuous exterior falls away, and the
severance of the inner and outer world, of the idea and the object of
sense, becomes complete. At a later period, logic and grammar, sister
arts, preserve and enlarge the decaying instinct of language, by rule
and method, which they gather from analysis and observation.

(2) There is no trace in any of Plato's writings that he was acquainted
with any language but G