l principles. Philosophers have sometimes dreamed
of a technical or scientific language, in words which should have
fixed meanings, and stand in the same relation to one another as the
substances which they denote. But there is no more trace of this in
Plato than there is of a language corresponding to the ideas; nor,
indeed, could the want of such a language be felt until the sciences
were far more developed. Those who would extend the use of technical
phraseology beyond the limits of science or of custom, seem to forget
that freedom and suggestiveness and the play of association are
essential characteristics of language. The great master has shown how
he regarded pedantic distinctions of words or attempts to confine their
meaning in the satire on Prodicus in the Protagoras.

(5) In addition to these anticipations of the general principles of
philology, we may note also a few curious observations on words and
sounds. 'The Eretrians say sklerotes for skleroter;' 'the Thessalians
call Apollo Amlos;' 'The Phrygians have the words pur, udor, kunes
slightly changed;' 'there is an old Homeric word emesato, meaning "he
contrived";' 'our forefathers, and especially the women, who are most
conservative of the ancient language, loved the letters iota and delta;
but now iota is changed into eta and epsilon, and delta into zeta;
this is supposed to increase the grandeur of the sound.' Plato was
very willing to use inductive arguments, so far as they were within his
reach; but he would also have assigned a large influence to chance. Nor
indeed is induction applicable to philology in the same degree as to
most of the physical sciences. For after we have pushed our researches
to the furthest point, in language as in all the other creations of the
human mind, there will always remain an element of exception or accident
or free-will, which cannot be eliminated.

The question, 'whether falsehood is impossible,' which Socrates
characteristically sets aside as too subtle for an old man (compare
Euthyd.), could only have arisen in an age of imperfect consciousness,
which had not yet learned to distinguish words from things. Socrates
replies in effect that words have an independent existence; thus
anticipating the solution of the mediaeval controversy of Nominalism
and Realism. He is aware too that languages exist in various degrees
of perfection, and that the analysis of them can only be carried to a
certain point. 'If we could always, or