I venture to say that none of those Platonic etymologies, which Lassalle regards as caricatures, are more absurd than those which he here accepts as serious. Liddell and Scott in their Lexicon say about θυμός, “probably rightly derived from θύω by Plat. Crat. 419 E, ἀπὸ τῆς θύσεως καὶ ζέσεως τῆς ψυχῆς.” The manner in which Schleiermacher and Steinhart also (Einleit. zum Kratylos, pp. 552-554), analysing this dialogue, represent Plato as passing backwards and forwards from mockery to earnest and from earnest to mockery, appears to me very singular: as well as the principle which Schleiermacher lays down (Introduct. p. 10), that Plato intended the general doctrines to be seriously understood, and the particular etymological applications to be mere mockery and extravagance (um wer weiss welche Komödie aufzuführen). What other philosopher has ever propounded serious doctrines, and then followed them up by illustrations knowingly and intentionally caricatured so as to disparage the doctrines instead of recommending them?
It is surely less difficult to believe that Plato conceived as plausible and admissible those etymologies which appear to us absurd.
As a specimen of the view entertained by able men of the seventeenth century respecting the Platonic and Aristotelian etymologies, see the Institutiones Logicæ of Burgersdicius, Lib. i. c. 25, not. 1. Lehrsch (Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, Part i. p. 34-35) agrees with the other commentators, that the Platonic etymologies in the Kratylus are caricatured to deride the boastful and arbitrary etymologies of the Sophists about language. But he too produces no evidence of such etymologies on the part of the Sophists; nay, what is remarkable, he supposes that both Protagoras and Prodikus agreed in the Platonic doctrine that names were φύσει (see pp. 17-19).
[41] Plato, Kratylus, p. 429 C. Steinhart (Einleit. zum Krat. pp. 549-550) observes that both Kratylus and Hermogenes are represented as understanding seriously these etymologies which are now affirmed to be meant as caricatures.
As specimens of Plato’s view respecting admissible etymologies, we find him in Timæus, p. 43 C, deriving αἴσθησις from ἀΐσσω: again in the same dialogue, p. 62 A, θερμὸς from κερματίζειν. In Legg. iv. 714, we have τὴν τοῦ νοῦ διανομὴν ἐπονομάζοντας νόμον. In Phædrus, p. 238 C, we find ἔρως derived from ἐῤῥωμένως ῥωσθεῖσα.
Aristotle derives ὄσφυς from ἰσοφυές, Histor. Animal. i. 13, p. 493, a. 22: also δίκαιον from δίχα, Ethic. Nikom. v. 7, 1132, a. 31; μεθύειν — μετὰ τὸ θύειν, Athenæus, ii. 40. The Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Περὶ Κόσμου (p. 401, a. 15) adopts the Platonic etymology of Δία-Ζῆνα as δι’ ὃν ζῶμεν
Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, c. 9, p. 948, derives κνέφας from κενὸν φάους.
The Emperor Marcus Antoninus derives ἀκτίς, the ray of the Sun, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐκτείνεσθαι, Meditat. viii. 57.
The Stoics, who were fond of etymologising, borrowed many etymologies from the Platonic Kratylus (Villoison, de Theologiâ Physicâ Stoicorum, in Osann’s edition of Cornutus De Naturâ Deorum, p. 512). Specimens of the Stoic etymologies are given by the Stoic Balbus in Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, ii. 25-29 (64-73).
Dähne (in his Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religions-Philosophie, i. p. 73 seq.) remarks on the numerous etymologies not merely propounded, but assumed as grounds of reasoning by Philo Judæus in commenting upon the Pentateuch, etymologies totally inadmissible and often ridiculous.