When M. Renan maintains the Protagorean doctrine, that it is not the Object which is cause of the denomination given, but the Object seen through the personal dispositions of the denominating Subject — he contradicts the reasoning of the Platonic Sokrates in the conversation with Hermogenes (pp. 386-387; compare 424 A). But he adopts the reasoning of the same in the subsequent conversation with Kratylus; wherein the relative point of view is introduced for the first time (pp. 429 A-B, 431 E), and brought more and more into the foreground (pp. 436 B-D — 437 C — 439 C).
The distinction drawn by M. Renan between l’arbitraire and le motivé appears to me unfounded: at least, it requires a peculiar explanation of the two words — for if by le caprice and l’arbitraire be meant the exclusion of all motive, such a state of mind could not be a preliminary to any proceeding at all. M. Renan can only mean that the motive which led to the original choice of the name, was peculiar to the occasion, and has since been forgotten. And this is what he himself says in a note to his Preface (pp. 18-19), replying to M. Littré: “L’Arien primitif a eu un motif pour appeler le frère bhratr ou fratr, et le Sémite pour l’appeler ah: peut on dire que cette différence résulte ou des aptitudes différentes de leur esprit, ou du spectacle extérieur? Chaque objet, les circonstances restant les mêmes, a été susceptible d’une foule de dénominations: le choix qui a été fait de l’une d’elles tient à des causes impossibles à saisir.”
[90] Plato (in Timæus, p. 29 B) recognises an essential affinity between the eternal Forms and the words or propositions in which they become subjects of discourse.
Comparison of Plato’s views about naming with those upon social institutions. Artistic, systematic construction — contrasted with unpremeditated unsystematic growth.
Respecting social institutions and government, there is one well-known theory to which Sir James Mackintosh gave expression in the phrase — “Governments are not made, but grow”. The like phrase has been applied by an eminent modern author on Logic, to language — “Languages are not made, but grow”.[91] One might suppose, in reading the second and third books of the Republic of Plato, that Plato also had adopted this theory: for the growth of a society, without any initiative or predetermined construction by a special individual, is there strikingly depicted.[92] But in truth it is this theory which stands in most of the Platonic works, as the antithesis depreciated and discredited by Plato. The view most satisfactory to him contemplates the analogy of a human artist or professional man; which he enlarges into the idea of an originating, intelligent, artistic, Constructor, as the source of all good. This view is exhibited to us in the Timæus, where we find the Demiurgus, building up by his own fiat all that is good in the Kosmos: in the Politikus, where we find the individual dictator producing by his uncontrolled ordinance all that is really good in the social system; — lastly, here also in the Kratylus, where we have the scientific or artistic Name-giver, and him alone, set forth as competent to construct an assemblage of names, each possessing full and perfect rectitude. To this theory there is presented a counter-theory, which Plato disapproves — a Kosmos which grows by itself and keeps up its own agencies, without any extra-kosmic constructor or superintendent: in like manner, an aggregate of social customs, and an aggregate of names, which have grown up no one knows how; and which sustain and perpetuate themselves by traditional force — by movement already acquired in a given direction. The idea of growth, by regular assignable steps and by regularising tendencies instinctive and inherent in Nature, belongs rather to Aristotle; Plato conceives Nature as herself irregular, and as persuaded or constrained into some sort of regularity by a supernatural or extranatural artist.[93]
[91] See Mr. John Stuart Mill’s Logic, Book i. ch. viii.
[92] Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 seq., where the γένεσις of a social community, out of common necessity and desire acting upon all and each of the individual citizens, is depicted in a striking way. The ἀρχη of the City (p. 369 B) as Plato there presents it, is Aristotelian rather than Platonic.
[93] M. Destutt de Tracy insists upon the emotional initiative force, as deeper and more efficacious than the intellectual, in the first formation of language.
“Dans l’origine du langage d’action, un seul geste dit — je veux cela, ou je vous montre cela, ou je vous demande secours; un seul cri dit, je vous appelle, ou je souffre, ou je suis content, &c.; mais sans distinguer aucune des idées qui composent ses propositions. Ce n’est point par le détail, mais par les masses, que, commencent toutes nos expressions, ainsi que toutes nos connaissances. Si quelques langages possèdent des signes propres à exprimer des idées isolées, ce n’est donc que par l’effet de la décomposition qui s’est opérée dans ces langages; et ces signes, ou noms propres d’idées, ne sont, pour ainsi dire, que des débris, des fragmens, ou du moins des émanations de ceux qui d’abord exprimaient, bien ou mal, les propositions tout entières.” (Destutt de Tracy, Grammaire, ch. i. p. 23, ed. 1825; see also the Idéologie of the same author, ch. xvi. p. 215.)
M. Renan enunciates in the most explicit terms this comparison of the formation of language to the growth and development of a germ:— “Les langues doivent êtres comparées, non au cristal qui se forme par agglomération autour d’un noyau, mais au germe qui se développe par sa force intime, et par l’appel nécessaire de ses parties”. (De l’Origine du Langage, ch. iii. p. 101; also ch. iv. pp. 115-117.)