Note 2 — Chapter XXXI · KRATYLUS.

The question between Hermogenes and Kratylus was much debated among the philosophers and literary men throughout antiquity (Aul. Gell. x. 4). Origen says (contra Celsum, i. c. 24) — λόγος βαθὺς καὶ ἀπόῤῥητος ὁ περὶ φύσεως ὀνομάτων, πότερον, ὡς οἴεται Ἀριστοτέλης, θέσει εἶναι τὰ ὀνόματα, ἢ, ὡς νομίζουσιν οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, φύσει.

Aristotle assumes the question in favour of θέσει, in his treatise De Interpretatione, without any reasoning, against the Platonic Kratylus; but his commentators, Ammonius and Boethius, note the controversy as one upon which eminent men in antiquity were much divided.

Plato connects his opinion, that names have a natural rectitude of signification, with his general doctrine of self-existent, archetypal, Forms or Ideas. The Stoics, and others who defended the same opinion afterwards, seem to have disconnected it from this latter doctrine.