CRATYLUS: Yes. [d]
SOCRATES: What about someone who imitates the being or essence of things in syllables and letters? According to this account, if he presents all the appropriate things, won’t the likeness—that is to say, the name—be a fine one? But if he happens to add a little or leave a little out, though he’ll still have produced an image, it won’t be fine? Doesn’t it follow that some names are finely made, while others are made badly?
CRATYLUS: Presumably.
SOCRATES: So presumably one person will be a good craftsman of names [e] and another a bad one?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And this craftsman is named a rule-setter.
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: By god, presumably some rule-setters are good and others bad then, especially if what we agreed to before is true, and they are just like other craftsmen.
CRATYLUS: That’s right. But you see, Socrates, when we assign ‘a’, ‘b’, and each of the other letters to names by using the craft of grammar, if we add, subtract, or transpose a letter, we don’t simply write the name [432] incorrectly, we don’t write it at all, for it immediately becomes a different name, if any of those things happens.
SOCRATES: That’s not a good way for us to look at the matter, Cratylus.
CRATYLUS: Why not?
SOCRATES: What you say may well be true of numbers, which have to be a certain number or not be at all. For example, if you add anything to the number ten or subtract anything from it, it immediately becomes a different number, and the same is true of any other number you choose. But this isn’t the sort of correctness that belongs to things with sensory [b] qualities, such as images in general. Indeed, the opposite is true of them—an image cannot remain an image if it presents all the details of what it represents. See if I’m right. Would there be two things—Cratylus and an image of Cratylus—in the following circumstances? Suppose some god didn’t just represent your color and shape the way painters do, but made all the inner parts like yours, with the same warmth and softness, and put [c] motion, soul, and wisdom like yours into them—in a word, suppose he made a duplicate of everything you have and put it beside you. Would there then be two Cratyluses or Cratylus and an image of Cratylus?
CRATYLUS: It seems to me, Socrates, that there would be two Cratyluses.
SOCRATES: So don’t you see that we must look for some other kind of correctness in images and in the names we’ve been discussing, and not insist that if a detail is added to an image or omitted from it, it’s no longer [d] an image at all. Or haven’t you noticed how far images are from having the same features as the things of which they are images?
CRATYLUS: Yes, I have.
SOCRATES: At any rate, Cratylus, names would have an absurd effect on the things they name, if they resembled them in every respect, since all of them would then be duplicated, and no one would be able to say which was the thing and which was the name.
CRATYLUS: That’s true.
SOCRATES: Take courage then and admit that one name may be well-given [e] while another isn’t. Don’t insist that it have all the letters and exactly resemble the thing it names, but allow that an inappropriate letter may be included. But if an inappropriate letter may be included in a name, an inappropriate name may be included in a phrase. And if an inappropriate name may be included in a phrase, a phrase which is inappropriate to the things may be employed in a statement. Things are still named and described when this happens, provided the phrases include the pattern of the things they’re about. Remember that this is just what Hermogenes and I claimed earlier about the names of the elements.56 [433]
CRATYLUS: I remember.
SOCRATES: Good. So even if a name doesn’t include all the appropriate letters, it will still describe the thing if it includes its pattern—though it will describe the thing well, if it includes all the appropriate letters, and badly, if it includes few of them. I think we had better accept this, Cratylus, or else, like men lost on the streets of Aegina late at night, we, too, may incur the charge of truly seeming to be the sort of people who arrive at things later than they should. For if you deny it, you cannot agree that a [b] name is correct if it expresses things by means of letters and syllables and you’ll have to search for some other account of the correctness of names, since if you both deny it and accept this account of correctness, you’ll contradict yourself.
CRATYLUS: You seem to me to be speaking reasonably, Socrates, and I take what you’ve said as established.
SOCRATES: Well, then, since we agree about that, let’s consider the next point. If a name is well given, don’t we say that it must have the appropriate letters?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the appropriate letters are the ones that are like the things? [c]
CRATYLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Therefore that’s the way that well-given names are given. But if a name isn’t well given, it’s probable that most of its letters are appropriate or like the thing it names, if indeed it is a likeness of it, but that some are inappropriate and prevent the name from being good or well given. Is that our view or is it something different?
CRATYLUS: I don’t suppose there’s anything to be gained by continuing to quarrel, Socrates, but I’m not satisfied that something is a name if it isn’t well given.
SOCRATES: But you are satisfied that a name is a way of expressing a thing? [d]
CRATYLUS: I am.
SOCRATES: And you think it’s true that some names are composed out of more primitive ones, while others are primary?
CRATYLUS: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: But if the primary names are to be ways of expressing things clearly, is there any better way of getting them to be such than by making each of them as much like the thing it is to express as possible? Or do you [e] prefer the way proposed by Hermogenes and many others, who claim that names are conventional signs that express things to those who already knew the things before they established the conventions? Do you think that the correctness of names is conventional, so that it makes no difference whether we accept the present convention or adopt the opposite one, calling ‘big’ what we now call ‘small’, and ‘small’ what we now call ‘big’? Which of these two ways of getting names to express things do you prefer?
CRATYLUS: A name that expresses a thing by being like it is in every way [434] superior, Socrates, to one that is given by chance.
SOCRATES: That’s right. But if a name is indeed to be like a thing, mustn’t the letters or elements out of which primary names are composed be naturally like things? Let me explain by returning to our earlier analogy with painting. Could a painting ever be made like any of the things that are, if it were not composed of pigments that were by nature like the [b] things that the art of painting imitates? Isn’t that impossible?
CRATYLUS: Yes, it’s impossible.
SOCRATES: Then by the same token can names ever be like anything unless the things they’re composed out of have some kind of likeness to the things they imitate? And aren’t they composed of letters or elements?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, consider what I said to Hermogenes earlier. Tell me, [c] do you think I was right to say that ‘r’ is like motion, moving, and hardness or not?
CRATYLUS: You were right.
SOCRATES: And ‘l’ is like smoothness, softness, and the other things we mentioned.
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Yet you know that the very thing that we call ‘sklērotēs’ (‘hardness’) is called ‘sklērotēr’ by the Eretrians?
CRATYLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then are both ‘r’ and ‘s’ like the same thing, and does the name ending in ‘r’ express the same thing to them as the one ending in ‘s’ does to us, or does one of them fail to express it?
[d] CRATYLUS: They both express it.
SOCRATES: In so far as ‘r’ and ‘s’ are alike, or in so far as they are unlike?
CRATYLUS: In so far as they are alike.
CRATYLUS: They are presumably alike with respect to expressing motion, at any rate.
SOCRATES: What about the ‘l’ in these names? Doesn’t it express the opposite of hardness?
CRATYLUS: Perhaps it is incorrectly included in them, Socrates. Maybe it’s just like the examples you cited to Hermogenes a while ago in which you added or subtracted letters. You were correct to do so, in my view. So, too, in the present case perhaps we ought to replace ‘l’ with ‘r’.
SOCRATES: You have a point. But what about when someone says ‘sklēron’ [e] (‘hard’), and pronounces it the way we do at present? Don’t we understand him? Don’t you yourself know what I mean by it?
CRATYLUS: I do, but that’s because of usage.
SOCRATES: When you say ‘usage’, do you mean something other than convention? Do you mean something by ‘usage’ besides this: when I utter this name and mean hardness by it, you know that this is what I mean? Isn’t that what you’re saying?
CRATYLUS: Yes. [435]
SOCRATES: And if when I utter a name, you know what I mean, doesn’t that name become a way for me to express it to you?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Even though the name I utter is unlike the thing I mean—since ‘l’ is unlike hardness (to revert to your example). But if that’s right, surely you have entered into a convention with yourself, and the correctness of names has become a matter of convention for you, for isn’t it the chance of usage and convention that makes both like and unlike letters express things? And even if usage is completely different from convention, still you must say that expressing something isn’t a matter of likeness but [b] of usage, since usage, it seems, enables both like and unlike names to express things. Since we agree on these points, Cratylus, for I take your silence as a sign of agreement, both convention and usage must contribute something to expressing what we mean when we speak. Consider numbers, Cratylus, since you want to have recourse to them.57 Where do you think you’ll get names that are like each one of the numbers, if you don’t allow this agreement and convention of yours to have some control over the correctness of names? I myself prefer the view that names should be as [c] much like things as possible, but I fear that defending this view is like hauling a ship up a sticky ramp, as Hermogenes suggested,58 and that we have to make use of this worthless thing, convention, in the correctness of names. For probably the best possible way to speak consists in using names all (or most) of which are like the things they name (that is, are appropriate to them), while the worst is to use the opposite kind of names. But let me next ask you this. What power do names have for us? What’s [d] the good of them?
CRATYLUS: To give instruction, Socrates. After all, the simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing’s name also knows the thing.
SOCRATES: Perhaps you mean this, Cratylus, that when you know what a name is like, and it is like the thing it names, then you also know the thing, since it is like the name, and all like things fall under one and the [e] same craft. Isn’t that why you say that whoever knows a thing’s name also knows the thing?
CRATYLUS: Yes, you’re absolutely right.
SOCRATES: Then let’s look at that way of giving instruction about the things that are. Is there also another one, but inferior to this, or is it the only one? What do you think?
CRATYLUS: I think that it is the best and only way, and that there are no others. [436]
SOCRATES: Is it also the best way to discover the things that are? If one discovers something’s name has one also discovered the thing it names? Or are names only a way of getting people to learn things, and must investigation and discovery be undertaken in some different way?
CRATYLUS: They must certainly be undertaken in exactly the same way and by means of the same things.
SOCRATES: But don’t you see, Cratylus, that anyone who investigates [b] things by taking names as his guides and looking into their meanings runs no small risk of being deceived?
CRATYLUS: In what way?
SOCRATES: It’s clear that the first name-giver gave names to things based on his conception of what those things were like. Isn’t that right?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if his conception was incorrect and he gave names based on it, what do you suppose will happen to us if we take him as our guide? Won’t we be deceived?
CRATYLUS: But it wasn’t that way, Socrates. The name-giver had to know [c] the things he was naming. Otherwise, as I’ve been saying all along, his names wouldn’t be names at all. And here’s a powerful proof for you that the name-giver didn’t miss the truth: His names are entirely consistent with one another. Or haven’t you noticed that all the names you utter are based on the same assumption and have the same purpose?
SOCRATES: But surely that’s no defense, Cratylus. The name-giver might have made a mistake at the beginning and then forced the other names [d] to be consistent with it. There would be nothing strange in that. Geometrical constructions often have a small unnoticed error at the beginning with which all the rest is perfectly consistent. That’s why every man must think a lot about the first principles of any thing and investigate them thoroughly to see whether or not it’s correct to assume them. For if they have been adequately examined, the subsequent steps will plainly follow from them. [e] However, I’d be surprised if names are actually consistent with one another. So let’s review our earlier discussion. We said that names signify the being or essence of things to us on the assumption that all things are moving and flowing and being swept along.59 Isn’t that what you think names express?
[437] CRATYLUS: Absolutely. Moreover, I think they signify correctly.
SOCRATES: Of those we discussed, let’s reconsider the name ‘epistēmē’ (‘knowledge’) first and see how ambiguous it is. It seems to signify that it stops (histēsi) the movement of our soul towards (epi) things, rather than that it accompanies them in their movement, so that it’s more correct to pronounce the beginning of it as we now do than to insert an ‘e’ and get ‘hepeïstēmē’60—or rather, to insert an ‘i’ instead of an ‘e’.61 Next, consider ‘bebaion’ (‘certain’), which is an imitation of being based (basis) or resting (stasis), not of motion. ‘Historia’ (‘inquiry’), which is somewhat the same, signifies the stopping (histēsi) of the flow (rhous). ‘Piston’ (‘confidence’), [b] too, certainly signifies stopping (histan). Next, anyone can see that ‘mnēmē’ (‘memory’) means a staying (monē) in the soul, not a motion. Or consider ‘hamartia’ (‘error’) and ‘sumphora’ (‘mishap’), if you like. If we take names as our guides, they seem to signify the same as ‘sunesis’ (‘comprehension’) and ‘epistēmē’ (‘knowledge’) and other names of excellent things.62 Moreover, ‘amathia’ (‘ignorance’) and ‘akolasia’ (‘licentiousness’) also seem to be closely akin to them. For ‘amathia’ seems to mean the journey of someone who accompanies god (hama theōi iōn), and ‘akolasia’ seems precisely to [c] mean movement guided by things (akolouthia tois pragmasin). Thus names of what we consider to be the very worst things seem to be exactly like those of the very best. And if one took the trouble, I think one could find many other names from which one could conclude that the name-giver intended to signify not that things were moving and being swept along, but the opposite, that they were at rest.
CRATYLUS: But observe, Socrates, that most of them signify motion. [d]
SOCRATES: What if they do, Cratylus? Are we to count names like votes and determine their correctness that way? If more names signify motion, does that make them the true ones?
CRATYLUS: No, that’s not a reasonable view.
SOCRATES: It certainly isn’t, Cratylus. So let’s drop this topic, and return to the one that led us here. A little while ago, you said, if you remember, [438] that the name-giver had to know the things he named.63 Do you still believe that or not?
CRATYLUS: I still do.
SOCRATES: Do you think that the giver of the first names also knew th
e things he named?
CRATYLUS: Yes, he did know them.
SOCRATES: What names did he learn or discover those things from? After all, the first names had not yet been given. Yet it’s impossible, on our [b] view, to learn or discover things except by learning their names from others or discovering them for ourselves?
CRATYLUS: You have a point there, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So, if things cannot be learned except from their names, how can we possibly claim that the name-givers or rule-setters had knowledge before any names had been given for them to know?
CRATYLUS: I think the truest account of the matter, Socrates, is that a [c] more than human power gave the first names to things, so that they are necessarily correct.
SOCRATES: In your view then this name-giver contradicted himself, even though he’s either a daemon or a god? Or do you think we were talking nonsense just now?
CRATYLUS: But one of the two apparently contradictory groups of names that we distinguished aren’t names at all.
SOCRATES: Which one, Cratylus? Those which point to rest or those which point to motion? As we said just now, this cannot be settled by majority vote.
[d] CRATYLUS: No, that wouldn’t be right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But since there’s a civil war among names, with some claiming that they are like the truth and others claiming that they are, how then are we to judge between them, and what are we to start from? We can’t start from other different names because there are none. No, it’s clear we’ll have to look for something other than names, something that will make plain to us without using names which of these two kinds of names are the true ones—that is to say, the ones that express the truth about the [e] things that are.
CRATYLUS: I think so, too.
SOCRATES: But if that’s right, Cratylus, then it seems it must be possible to learn about the things that are, independently of names.
CRATYLUS: Evidently.
SOCRATES: How else would you expect to learn about them? How else than in the most legitimate and natural way, namely, learning them through one another, if they are somehow akin, and through themselves? For something different, something that was other than they, wouldn’t signify them, but something different, something other.
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