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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: have invented that which he is. But this would have been an 'argument too
subtle' for Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the origin of
language 'as an excuse for not giving a reason,' which he compares to the
introduction of the 'Deus ex machina' by the tragic poets when they have to
solve a difficulty; thus anticipating many modern controversies in which
the primary agency of the divine Being is confused with the secondary
cause; and God is assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a
lacuna in human knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)
Neither is Plato wrong in supposing that an element of design and art
enters into language. The creative power abating is supplemented by a
mechanical process. 'Languages are not made but grow,' but they are made
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