imitation must be regulated.
He was probably also the first who made a distinction between simple and
compound words, a truth second only in importance to that which has just
been mentioned. His great insight in one direction curiously contrasts
with his blindness in another; for he appears to be wholly unaware
(compare his derivation of agathos from agastos and thoos) of the
difference between the root and termination. But we must recollect that
he was necessarily more ignorant than any schoolboy of Greek grammar,
and had no table of the inflexions of verbs and nouns before his eyes,
which might have suggested to him the distinction.

(4) Plato distinctly affirms that language is not truth, or 'philosophie
une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates has delighted himself with
discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly
satirising the pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in
words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be
gathered from his experiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many,
words expressive of rest, as he had previously found expressive of
motion. And even if this had been otherwise, who would learn of words
when he might learn of things? There is a great controversy and high
argument between Heracleiteans and Eleatics, but no man of sense would
commit his soul in such enquiries to the imposers of names...In this and
other passages Plato shows that he is as completely emancipated from the
influence of 'Idols of the tribe' as Bacon himself.

The lesson which may be gathered from words is not metaphysical or
moral, but historical. They teach us the affinity of races, they tell us
something about the association of ideas, they occasionally preserve the
memory of a disused custom; but we cannot safely argue from them about
right and wrong, matter and mind, freedom and necessity, or the other
problems of moral and metaphysical philosophy. For the use of words on
such subjects may often be metaphorical, accidental, derived from other
languages, and may have no relation to the contemporary state of thought
and feeling. Nor in any case is the invention of them the result of
philosophical reflection; they have been commonly transferred from
matter to mind, and their meaning is the very reverse of their
etymology. Because there is or is not a name for a thing, we cannot
argue that the thing has or has not an actual existence; or that
the antitheses