Note 36 — Chapter XXXI · KRATYLUS.

Lassalle (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 379-384) asserts and shows very truly that Protagoras cannot be the person intended to be represented by Plato under the name of Kratylus, or as holding the opinion of Kratylus about names. Lassalle affirms that Plato intends Kratylus in the dialogue to represent Herakleitus himself (p. 385); moreover he greatly extols the sagacity of Herakleitos for having laid down the principle, that “Names are the essence of things,” in which principle Lassalle (so far as I understand him) himself concurs.

Assuming this to be the case, we should naturally suppose that if Plato intends to ridicule any one, by presenting caricatured etymologies as flowing from this principle, the person intended as butt must be Herakleitus himself. Not so Lassalle. He asserts as broadly as Stallbaum that it was Protagoras and the other Sophists who grossly abused the doctrine of Herakleitus, for the purpose of confusing and perverting truth by arbitrary etymologies. His language is even more monstrous and extravagant than that of Stallbaum; yet he does not produce (any more than Stallbaum) the least fragment of proof that the Sophists or Protagoras did what he imputes to them (pp. 400-401-403-422).

M. Lenormant, in his recent edition of the Kratylus (Comm. p. 7-9), maintains also that neither the Sophists nor the Rhetors pretended to etymologise, nor are here ridiculed. But he ascribes to Plato in the Kratylus a mystical and theological purpose which I find it difficult to follow.