attainable, we may fairly conclude that we have reached one of these
original elements, and the truth of such a word must be tested by some new
method. Will you help me in the search?
All names, whether primary or secondary, are intended to show the nature of
things; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from
the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And
let me ask another question,--If we had no faculty of speech, how should we
communicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and
dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean lightness--heaviness would be
expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be
described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only
express anything by imitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well
as the rest of the body. But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not
yet a name, because people may imitate sheep or goats without naming them.
What, then, is a name? In the first place, a name is not a musical, or,
secondly, a pictorial imitation, but an imitation of that kind which
expresses the nature of a thing; and is the invention not of a musician, or
of a painter, but of a namer.
And now, I think that we may consider the names about which you were
asking. The way to analyze them will be by going back to the letters, or
primary elements of which they are composed. First, we separate the
alphabet into classes of letters, distinguishing the consonants, mutes,
vowels, and semivowels; and when we have learnt them singly, we shall learn
to know them in their various combinations of two or more letters; just as
the painter knows how to use either a single colour, or a combination of
colours. And like the painter, we may apply letters to the expression of
objects, and form them into syllables; and these again into words, until
the picture or figure--that is, language--is completed. Not that I am
literally speaking of ourselves, but I mean to say that this was the way in
which the ancients framed language. And this leads me to consider whether
the primary as well as the secondary elements are rightly given. I may
remark, as I was saying about the Gods, that we can only attain to
conjecture of them. But still we insist that ours is the true and only
method of discovery; otherwise we must have recourse, like the tragic
poets, to a Deus ex machina, and say that God gave the first names, and
therefore they are right; or that the barbarians are older than we are, and
that we learnt of them; or that antiquity has cast a veil over the truth.
Yet all these are not reasons; they are only ingenious excuses for having
no reasons.
I will freely impart to you my own notions, though they are somewhat
crude:--the letter rho appears to me to be the general instrument which the
legislator has employed to express all motion or kinesis. (I ought to
explain that kinesis is just iesis (going), for the letter eta was unknown
to the ancients; and the root, kiein, is a foreign form of ienai: of
kinesis or eisis, the opposite is stasis). This use of rho is evident in
the words tremble, break, crush, crumble, and the like; the imposer of
names perceived that the tongue is most agitated in the pronunciation of
this letter, just as he used iota to express the subtle power which
penetrates through all things. The letters phi, psi, sigma, zeta, which
require a great deal of wind, are employed in the imitation of such notions
as shivering, seething, shaking, and in general of what is windy. The
letters delta and tau convey the idea of binding and rest in a place: the
lambda denotes smoothness, as in the words slip, sleek, sleep, and the
like. But when the slipping tongue is detained by the heavier sound of
gamma, then arises the notion of a glutinous clammy nature: nu is sounded
from within, and has a notion of inwardness: alpha is the expression of
size; eta of length; omicron of roundness, and therefore there is plenty of
omicron in the word goggulon. That is my view, Hermogenes, of the
correctness of names; and I should like to hear what Cratylus would say.
'But, Socrates, as I was telling you, Cratylus mystifies me; I should like
to ask him, in your presence, what he means by the fitness of names?' To
this appeal, Cratylus replies 'that he cannot explain so important a
subject all in a moment.' 'No, but you may "add little to little," as
Hesiod says.' Socrates here interposes his own request, that Cratylus will
give some account of his theory. Hermogenes and himself are mere
sciolists, but Cratylus has reflected on these matters, and has had
teachers. Cratylus replies in the words of Achilles: '"Illustrious Ajax,
you have spoken in all things much to my mind," whether Euthyphro, or some
Muse inhabiting your own breast, was the inspirer.' Socrates replies, that
he is afraid of being self-deceived, and therefore he must 'look fore and
aft,' as Homer remarks. Does not Cratylus agree with him that names teach
us the nature of things? 'Yes.' And naming is an art, and the artists are
legislators, and like artists in general, some of them are better and some
of them are worse than others, and give better or worse laws, and make
better or worse names. Cratylus cannot admit that one name is better than
another; they are either true names, or they are not names at all; and when
he is asked about the name of Hermogenes, who is acknowledged to have no
luck in him, he affirms this to be the name of somebody else. Socrates
supposes him to mean that falsehood is impossible, to which his own answer
would be, that there has never been a lack of liars. Cratylus presses him
with the old sophistical argument, that falsehood is saying that which is
not, and therefore saying nothing;--you cannot utter the word which is not.
Socrates complains that this argument is too subtle for an old man to
understand: Suppose a person addressing Cratylus were to say, Hail,
Athenian Stranger, Hermogenes! would these words be true or false? 'I
should say that they would be mere unmeaning sounds, like the hammering of
a brass pot.' But you would acknowledge that names, as well as pictures,
are imitations, and also that pictures may give a right or wrong
representation of a man or woman:--why may not names then equally give a
representation true and right or false and wrong? Cratylus admits that
pictures may give a true or false representation, but denies that names
can. Socrates argues, that he may go up to a man and say 'this is year
picture,' and again, he may go and say to him 'this is your name'--in the
one case appealing to his sense of sight, and in the other to his sense of
hearing;--may he not? 'Yes.' Then you will admit that there is a right or
a wrong assignment of names, and if of names, then of verbs and nouns; and
if of verbs and nouns, then of the sentences which are made up of them; and
comparing nouns to pictures, you may give them all the appropriate sounds,
or only some of them. And as he who gives all the colours makes a good
picture, and he who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but
still a picture; so he who gives all the sounds makes a good name, and he
who gives only some of them, a bad or imperfect one, but a name still. The
artist of names, that is, the legislator, may be a good or he may be a bad
artist. 'Yes, Socrates, but the cases are not parallel; for if you
subtract or misplace a letter, the name ceases to be a name.' Socrates
admits that the number 10, if an unit is subtracted, would cease to be 10,
but denies that names are of this purely quantitative nature. Suppose that
there are two objects--Cratylus and the image of Cratylus; and let us
imagine that some God makes them perfectly alike, both in their outward
form and in their inner nature and qualities: then there will be two
Cratyluses, and not merely Cratylus and the image of Cratylus. But an
image in fact always falls short in some degree of the original, and if
images are not exact counterparts, why should names be? if they were, they
would be the doubles of their originals, and indistinguishable from them;
and how ridiculous would this be! Cratylus admits the truth of Socrates'
remark. But then Socrates rejoins, he should have the courage to
acknowledge that letters may be wrongly inserted in a noun, or a noun in a
sentence; and yet the noun or the sentence may retain a meaning. Better to
admit this, that we may not be punished like the traveller in Egina who
goes about at night, and that Truth herself may not say to us, 'Too late.'
And, errors excepted, we may still affirm that a name to be correct must
have proper letters, which bear a resemblance to the thing signified. I
must remind you of what Hermogenes and I were saying about the letter rho
accent, which was held to be expressive of motion and hardness, as lambda
is of smoothness;--and this you will admit to be their natural meaning.
But then, why do the Eritreans call that skleroter which we call sklerotes?
We can understand one another, although the letter rho accent is not
equivalent to the letter s: why is this? You reply, because the two
letters are sufficiently alike for the purpose of expressing motion. Well,
then, there is the letter lambda; what business has this in a word meaning
hardness? 'Why, Socrates, I retort upon you, that we put in and pull out
letters at pleasure.' And the explanation of this is custom or agreement:
we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s and a convention may
indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. How could there be names
for all the numbers unless you allow that convention is used? Imitation is
a poor thing, and has to be supplemented by convention, which is another
poor thing; although I agree with you in thinking that the most perfect
form of language is found only where there is a perfect correspondence of
sound and meaning. But let me ask you what is the use and force of names?
'The use of names, Socrates, is to inform, and he who knows names knows
things.' Do you mean that the discovery of names is the same as the
discovery of things? 'Yes.' But do you not see that there is a degree of
deception about names? He who first gave names, gave them according to his
conception, and that may have been erroneous. 'But then, why, Socrates, is
language so consistent? all words have the same laws.' Mere consistency is
no test of truth. In geometrical problems, for example, there may be a
flaw at the beginning, and yet the conclusion may follow consistently.
And, therefore, a wise man will take especial care of first principles.
But are words really consistent; are there not as many terms of praise
which signify rest as which signify motion? There is episteme, which is
connected with stasis, as mneme is with meno. Bebaion, again, is the
expression of station and position; istoria is clearly descriptive of the
stopping istanai of the stream; piston indicates the cessation of motion;
and there are many words having a bad sense, which are connected with ideas
of motion, such as sumphora, amartia, etc.: amathia, again, might be
explained, as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia as e akolouthia tois
pragmasin. Thus the bad names are framed on the same principle as the
good, and other examples might be given, which would favour a theory of
rest rather than of motion. 'Yes; but the greater number of words express
motion.' Are we to count them, Cratylus; and is correctness of names to be
determined by the voice of a majority?
Here is another point: we were saying that the legislator gives names; and
therefore we must suppose that he knows the things which he names: but how
can he have learnt things from names before there were any names? 'I
believe, Socrates, that some power more than human first gave things their
names, and that these were necessarily true names.' Then how came the
giver of names to contradict himself, and to make some names expressive of
rest, and others of motion? 'I do not suppose that he did make them both.'
Then which did he make--those which are expressive of rest, or those which
are expressive of motion?...But if some names are true and others false, we
can only decide between them, not by counting words, but by appealing to
things. And, if so, we must allow that things may be known without names;
for names, as we have several times admitted, are the images of things; and
the higher knowledge is of things, and is not to be derived from names; and
though I do not doubt that the inventors of language gave names, under the
idea that all things are in a state of motion and flux, I believe that they
were mistaken; and that having fallen into a whirlpool themselves, they are
trying to drag us after them. For is there not a true beauty and a true
good, which is always beautiful and always good? Can the thing beauty be
vanishing away from us while the words are yet in our mouths? And they
could not be known by any one if they are always passing away--for if they
are always passing away, the observer has no opportunity of observing their
state. Whether the doctrine of the flux or of the eternal nature be the
truer, is hard to determine. But no man of sense will put himself, or the
education of his mind, in the power of names: he will not condemn himself
to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe that everything is in a flux
like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world is a man who has a
running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, but is also very
likely to be untrue; and therefore I would have you reflect while you are
young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me. 'I have
thought, Socrates, and after a good deal of thinking I incline to
Heracleitus.' Then another day, my friend, you shall give me a lesson.
'Very good, Socrates, and I hope that you will continue to study these
things yourself.'
