Ficinus, too, in his argument to the Kratylus (p. 768), speaks much about the mystic sanctity of names, recognised not merely by Pythagoras and Plato, but also by the Jews and Orientals. He treats the etymologies in the Kratylus as seriously intended. He says not a word about any intention on the part of Plato to deride the Sophists or any other Etymologists.
So also Sydenham, in his translation of Plato’s Philêbus (p. 33), designates the Kratylus as “a dialogue in which is taught the nature of things, as well the permanent as the transient, by a supposed etymology of Names and Words”.
[86] Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425 D, 426 B. Because Sokrates says that these etymologies may appear ridiculous, we are not to infer that he proposed them as caricatures; see what Plato says in the Republic, v. p. 452, about his own propositions respecting the training of women, which others (he says) will think ludicrous, but which he proposes with the most thorough and serious conviction.
Opposite tendencies of Sokrates in the last half of the dialogue — he disconnects his theory of Naming from the Herakleitean doctrine.
In the second part of the dialogue, where Kratylus is introduced as uncompromising champion of this same theory, Sokrates changes his line of argument, and impugns the peremptory or exclusive pretensions of the theory: first denying some legitimate corollaries from it — next establishing by the side of it the counter-theory of Hermogenes, as being an inferior though indispensable auxiliary — yet still continuing to uphold it as an ideal of what is Best. He concludes by disconnecting the theory pointedly from the doctrine of Herakleitus, with which Kratylus connected it, and by maintaining that there can be no right naming, and no sound knowledge, if that doctrine be admitted.[87] The Platonic Ideas, eternal and unchangeable, are finally opposed to Kratylus as the only objects truly knowable and nameable — and therefore as the only conditions under which right naming can be realised. The Name-givers of actual society have failed in their task by proceeding on a wrong doctrine: neither they nor the names which they have given can be trusted.[88] The doctrine of perpetual change or movement is true respecting the sensible world and particulars, but it is false respecting the intelligible world or universals — Ideas and Forms. These latter are the only things knowable: but we cannot know them through names: we must study them by themselves and by their own affinities.
[87] Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D. Ἆρ’ οὖν οἷον τε προσειπεῖν αὐτὸ ὀρθως, εἰ ἀεὶ ὑπεξέχεται;
[88] Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. Compare pp. 436 D, 439 B.
Lassalle contends that Herakleitus and his followers considered the knowledge of names to be not only indispensable to the knowledge of things, but equivalent to and essentially embodying that knowledge. (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 363-368-387.) See also a passage of Proklus, in his Commentary on the Platonic Parmenidês, p. 476, ed. Stallbaum.
The remarkable passage in the first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, wherein he speaks of Plato and Plato’s early familiarity with Kratylus and the Herakleitean opinions, coincides very much with the course of the Platonic dialogue Kratylus, from its beginning to its end (Aristot. Metaphys. A. p. 987 a-b).
How this is to be done, Sokrates professes himself unable to say. We may presume him to mean, that a true Artistic Name-giver must set the example, knowing these Forms or essences beforehand, and providing for each its appropriate Name, or Name-Form, significant by essential analogy.