One Letter Hides the God
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Socrates — τῶν παλαιῶν οἱ τὰ ὀνόματα τιθέμενοι οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἡγοῦντο οὐδὲ ὄνειδος μανίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τῇ καλλίστῃ τέχνῃ, ᾗ τὸ μέλλον κρίνεται, αὐτὸ τοῦτο τοὔνομα ἐμπλέκοντες μανικὴν ἐκάλεσαν.… οἱ δὲ νῦν ἀπειροκάλως τὸ ταῦ ἐπεμβάλλοντες μαντικὴν ἐκάλεσαν
The men of old who established our names did not think madness shameful, or a thing of reproach. Otherwise they would never have woven that very word into the name of the noblest art of all — the art that judges the future — and called it manikḗ, the madness-art. They named it so because they thought madness noble, whenever it comes by divine allotment. It was a later age, with no ear for beauty, that stuck in the tau and made it mantikḗ.
The palinode's first argument is an etymology. The founders of language, Socrates claims, named the noblest art — prophecy, by which the future is judged — 'manikḗ,' the madness-art. Only a later, tone-deaf age slipped in a tau.
The palinode's opening argument is an etymology — and, for once in the history of inspired word-play, a sound one. Socrates claims prophecy's art (<em>mantikḗ</em>) was originally the madness-art (<em>manikḗ</em>), one intrusive tau apart; modern linguistics agrees that <em>mántis</em> (seer) and <em>manía</em> (madness) genuinely share a root — *men-, the mind-root, which also yields <em>mnḗmē</em> (memory), <em>Mousa</em> perhaps, and English 'mind' itself. The language had already voted: the seer IS the mad-minded one. Note the standard of proof, too — the tau-inserters acted <em>apeirokálōs</em>, 'without experience of the beautiful': bad etymology as a lapse of TASTE. In Plato bad taste is a form of ignorance; beauty is something known, and missable.<br><br>The hinge of the sentence is <em>theíāi moírāi</em> — madness is noble 'when it comes by divine <em>portion</em>.' <em>Moîra</em> is fate as serving: the universe as a feast at which each receives a measured share, dealt not earned. It is Plato's word for grace avant la lettre — the <em>Meno</em> ends by giving virtue itself the same source. The whole palinode is folded into this one qualification: not all madness, but the dealt kind; and the finest <em>téchnē</em> turns out to be the one no technique can produce. The <em>Cratylus</em> plays this name-game for a whole dialogue — sometimes in earnest, sometimes laughing; here it is liturgy's first move.
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