Politicus, Plato expressly draws attention to the want of agreement in
words and things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is
not the less Plato's own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, that
Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent with the rest of his
philosophy.

2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest.
He is discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the
'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is
speaking, and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary
wisdom. When he is arguing out of Homer, about the names of Hector's son,
or when he describes himself as inspired or maddened by Euthyphro, with
whom he has been sitting from the early dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias;
Phaedr.) and expresses his intention of yielding to the illusion to-day,
and to-morrow he will go to a priest and be purified, we easily see that
his words are not to be taken seriously. In this part of the dialogue his
dread of committing impiety, the pretended derivation of his wisdom from
another, the extravagance of some of his etymologies, and, in general, the
manner in which the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us
strongly of the Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending over more than
half the dialogue. But then, we remember that the Euthydemus is a still
longer jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is
parodying the ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is
ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and grammarians. The
fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic
books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way into
later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjectures of
Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove
that they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his
conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of mythology.