Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
After reading carefully the essay which, in his recently-published Varia Socratica, Part I., Prof. A. E. Taylor has written on the use of the words and in the Greek literature of the Socratic and Platonic periods, I find myself on the one hand in agreement with him as to the importance of such linguistic investigations for the understanding of Plato, and on the other in frequent disagreement with him as to the meaning of the words in the passages he cites, and the inferences he draws from them. Thinking that Prof. Taylor's analysis of the use of the terms in Hippocrates is very far from final, I offer in this paper a further contribution to their interpretation, confining myself as far as possible to the question, What do and mean in the Hippocratean writings?
1 This result seems to be in agreement with that obtained by Ritter from his examination of the uses of the words in the Platonic dialogues themselves: see his Neue Untersuchungen ueber Platon, p. 323. He there treats the logical and metaphysical meanings as developed from the original ‘outer appearance, form’ (ausseres Aussehen, Gestalt) through the intermediate meaning of ‘inner structure’(inneres Verhaltnis, Verfassung, Beschaffenheit).