Complete Works (38 page)

S
OCRATES
: In so far as ‘
r
’ and ‘
s
’ are alike, or in so far as they are unlike?

C
RATYLUS
: In so far as they are alike.

S
OCRATES
: Are they alike in all respects?

C
RATYLUS
: They are presumably alike with respect to expressing motion, at any rate.

S
OCRATES
: What about the ‘
l
’ in these names? Doesn’t it express the opposite of hardness?

C
RATYLUS
: 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
’.

S
OCRATES
: You have a point. But what about when someone says ‘
skl
ē
ron
’ [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?

C
RATYLUS
: I do, but that’s because of usage.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes.
[435]

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: To give instruction, Socrates. After all, the simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing’s name also knows the thing.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes, you’re absolutely right.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: I think that it is the best and only way, and that there are no others.
[436]

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: They must certainly be undertaken in exactly the same way and by means of the same things.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: In what way?

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: 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?

S
OCRATES
: 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]
C
RATYLUS
: Absolutely. Moreover, I think they signify correctly.

S
OCRATES
: Of those we discussed, let’s reconsider the name ‘
epist
ē
m
ē
’ (‘knowledge’) first and see how ambiguous it is. It seems to signify that it stops (
hist
ē
si
) 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 ‘
hepeïst
ē
m
ē
’
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 (
hist
ē
si
) of the flow (
rhous
). ‘
Piston
’ (‘confidence’), [b] too, certainly signifies stopping (
histan
). Next, anyone can see that ‘
mn
ē
m
ē
’ (‘memory’) means a staying (
mon
ē
) 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 ‘
epist
ē
m
ē
’ (‘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 the
ō
i i
ō
n
), 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.

C
RATYLUS
: But observe, Socrates, that most of them signify motion. [d]

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: No, that’s not a reasonable view.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: I still do.

S
OCRATES
: Do you think that the giver of the first names also knew the things he named?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes, he did know them.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: You have a point there, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: 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.

S
OCRATES
: 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?

C
RATYLUS
: But one of the two apparently contradictory groups of names that we distinguished aren’t names at all.

S
OCRATES
: 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] C
RATYLUS
: No, that wouldn’t be right, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: 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.

C
RATYLUS
: I think so, too.

S
OCRATES
: But if that’s right, Cratylus, then it seems it must be possible to learn about the things that are, independently of names.

C
RATYLUS
: Evidently.

S
OCRATES
: 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.

C
RATYLUS
: That seems true to me.

[439]
S
OCRATES
: But wait a minute! Haven’t we often agreed that if names are well given, they are like the things they name and so are likenesses of them?

C
RATYLUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: So if it’s really the case that one can learn about things through names and that one can also learn about them through themselves, which would be the better and clearer way to learn about them? Is it better to learn from the likeness both whether it itself is a good likeness and also the truth it is a likeness of? Or is it better to learn from the truth both the [b] truth itself and also whether the likeness of it is properly made?

C
RATYLUS
: I think it is certainly better to learn from the truth.

S
OCRATES
: How to learn and make discoveries about the things that are is probably too large a topic for you or me. But we should be content to have agreed that it is far better to investigate them and learn about them through themselves than to do so through their names.

C
RATYLUS
: Evidently so, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Still, let’s investigate one further issue so as to avoid being deceived by the fact that so many of these names seem to lean in the same [c] direction—as we will be if, as seems to me to be the case, the name-givers really did give them in the belief that everything is always moving and flowing, and as it happens things aren’t really that way at all, but the name-givers themselves have fallen into a kind of vortex and are whirled around in it, dragging us with them. Consider, Cratylus, a question that I for my part often dream about: Are we or aren’t we to say that there is a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same for each one of the things that are? [d]