Cratylus

HermogenesShall we let Socrates here in on our discussion too?

CratylusIf you like.

HermogenesSocrates, Cratylus here says that each of the things that are has a correctness of name that belongs to it by nature. A name, he says, isn’t whatever some people agree to call a thing, uttering a bit of their own speech at it. Rather, there is a natural correctness of 383b names, the same for everyone, Greeks and non-Greeks alike. So I ask him whether his name really is Cratylus or not, and he agrees that it is. “And what about Socrates?” I said. “Socrates,” he said.

SocratesHermogenes, son of Hipponicus, there’s an old proverb that 384b fine things are hard to learn about. And the subject of names happens to be no small subject. Now if I had already heard Prodicus’ fifty-drachma lecture, which, as he tells it, gives anyone who hears it a full education on this topic, nothing would have stopped you from knowing the truth about the correctness of names right away. As it is, I haven’t heard it. 384c I’ve only heard the one-drachma version. So I don’t know what the truth about such things is. But I’m ready to look into it together with you and Cratylus. As for his saying that Hermogenes isn’t really your name, I suspect he’s teasing you. He probably thinks that you’re always going after money and failing every time.note

HermogenesWell, Socrates, I’ve often discussed this with Cratylus here and with many others, and I can’t be persuaded 384d that there’s any correctness of name other than agreement and convention. It seems to me that whatever name someone gives to a thing, that is the correct one. And if he changes it again for another and stops using the first, the later one is no less correct than the earlier. It’s like when we change the names of our household slaves: the new name is no less correct than the one given before. No name belongs to anything by nature. It belongs by the custom and habit of those who establish the usage and do the calling. But if it’s some other 384e way, I’m ready to learn and to listen, not only to Cratylus but to anyone at all.

SocratesYou may well have a point, Hermogenes. But let’s look into it. Whatever someone calls a thing, you say, that’s its name?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesWhether a private individual calls it that or a city?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesWell then: suppose I call one of the things that are—for example, what we now call “human being”—by the name “horse,” and what we now call “horse” by the name “human being.” Will the same thing then have the name “human being” publicly and “horse” privately? And the other one, again, “human being” privately and “horse” publicly? Is that what you mean?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesCome now, tell me this. Is there something you call speaking truly and speaking falsely?

HermogenesYes, there is.

SocratesSo there could be a true statement and a false one?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd is the statement that says the things that are as they are true, and the one that says them as they are not false?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesSo it’s possible to say in a statement both the things that are and the things that are not?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd is a true statement true only as a whole, while its parts aren’t true?

HermogenesNo, its parts are true too.

SocratesAre the large parts true but not the small ones, or are they all true?

HermogenesAll of them, I think.

SocratesNow is there any part of a statement you can mention that’s smaller than a name?

HermogenesNo, that’s the smallest.

SocratesSo the name that’s part of a true statement is also something said?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd it’s true, as you say.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd isn’t a part of a false statement false?

HermogenesYes, it is.

SocratesSo it’s possible to say a false name as well as a true one, since it’s possible to say a false statement as well as a true one?

HermogenesOf course.

SocratesSo whatever each person says is the name of a thing, that is its name?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd however many names someone says a thing has, it will have that many, and for just as long as he says so?

HermogenesYes, Socrates, because I know of no other correctness of name than this. I can call each thing by one name, the one I gave it, and you can call it by another, the one you gave it. In the same way 385e I see that individual cities have their own names established for the same things, and that Greeks differ from other Greeks, and Greeks from non-Greeks.

SocratesCome then, Hermogenes, let’s see whether you think the things that are are like this too, with their being private to each person. That was what Protagoras meant when he said that a human being is “the measure of all 386a things”: that however things appear to me, that’s how they are for me, and however they appear to you, that’s how they are for you. Or do you think they have some stability of being of their own?note

HermogenesThere have been times, Socrates, when I was so puzzled that I was swept along into exactly what Protagoras says. But I don’t really think it’s like that.

SocratesWhat? Have you ever been swept along so far that you didn’t think 386b any human being was really bad?

HermogenesNo, by Zeus. It’s actually happened to me often that I’ve thought some people were very bad indeed—and quite a lot of them.

SocratesAnd haven’t you ever thought that some people were very good?

HermogenesVery few.

SocratesBut you have thought so?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen how do you account for it? Like this: the very good are full of understanding, and the very bad are utterly foolish?

HermogenesYes, I think that’s how it is.

SocratesNow if Protagoras was telling the truth, and the truth is that things are for each person just as they seem to him, is it possible for some of us to have understanding and others to be foolish?

HermogenesCertainly not.

SocratesAnd this too, I imagine, you’re quite sure of: if there is such a thing as understanding and such a thing as foolishness, Protagoras can’t possibly be telling the truth. For no one would really have any more understanding than anyone else if whatever seems so to each 386d person is going to be true for him.

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesBut I don’t think you agree with Euthydemus either, that all things belong to all people alike, at the same time and always. For in that case too, some people couldn’t be good and others bad, if excellence and badness belonged to everyone alike and always.note

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesThen if it isn’t the case that all things belong to all people alike, at the same time and always, and it isn’t the case that each thing is private to each person, it’s clear 386e that things have some stable being of their own. They aren’t relative to us, and they aren’t dragged up and down by us according to how they appear to us. They exist by themselves, in relation to their own being, just as their nature is.

HermogenesI think so, Socrates.

SocratesThen could the things themselves have this sort of nature, while the actions we perform on them don’t? Or aren’t actions also one kind of the things that are?

HermogenesCertainly they are, too.

SocratesSo actions too are performed according to their own nature, not according to our opinion. For example, if we set out to cut one of the things that are, should we cut each thing however we want and with whatever we want? Or will we cut it, and get something done, and do it correctly, if we’re willing to cut each thing according to the nature of cutting and being cut, and with what is natural for it; while if we go against nature we’ll fail and accomplish nothing?

HermogenesThat’s how it seems to me.

SocratesAnd again, if we set out to burn something, we mustn’t burn it according to just any opinion, but according to the correct one? And that’s the one about how, and with what, it’s each thing’s nature to burn and be burned?

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesAnd the same goes for everything else?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesNow isn’t speaking also one kind of action?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen will someone speak correctly by speaking however he thinks he should, 387c or will he get something done and actually speak only if he speaks in the way and with the means by which it’s natural to say things and for them to be said? And otherwise will he fail and accomplish nothing?

HermogenesI think it’s as you say.

SocratesNow isn’t naming a part of speaking? For it’s by naming things, surely, that people make statements.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen isn’t naming also a kind of action, if speaking was a kind of action concerning things?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd we saw that actions aren’t relative to us, but have a nature peculiar to themselves?

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesThen we should name things in the way and with the means by which it’s natural to name them and for them to be named, and not however we want, if this is going to be consistent with what we said before? And that way we’d get something done and actually name, but otherwise not?

HermogenesIt seems so to me.

SocratesCome now: what has to be cut, we say, has to be cut with something?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd what has to be woven has to be woven with something? And what has to be drilled has to be drilled with something?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd so what has to be named has to be named with something?

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesAnd what was it we had to drill with?

HermogenesA drill.

SocratesAnd to weave with?

HermogenesA shuttle.

SocratesAnd to name with?

HermogenesA name.

SocratesWell said. So a name is a kind of tool too.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesNow if I asked, “What sort of tool was a shuttle?” wouldn’t the answer be, the one we weave with?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd what do we do when we weave? Don’t we separate the weft and the warp, which are tangled together?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd you’ll be able to say the same sort of thing about a drill and the rest?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen can you say the same sort of thing about a name? When we name with a name, which is a tool, what are we doing?

HermogenesI can’t say.

SocratesAren’t we teaching each other something, and separating things according to how they are?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo a name is a tool for teaching, one that separates 388c being, as a shuttle separates a fabric.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd the shuttle is a weaver’s tool?

HermogenesOf course.

SocratesSo a weaver will use a shuttle well—and “well” means as a weaver should. And a teacher will use a name well—and “well” means as a teacher should.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen whose work will the weaver be using well when he uses the shuttle?

HermogenesThe carpenter’s.

SocratesIs everyone a carpenter, or only the one who has the craft?

HermogenesThe one who has the craft.

SocratesAnd whose work will the driller be using well when he uses the drill?

HermogenesThe blacksmith’s.

SocratesAnd is everyone a blacksmith, or only the one who has the craft?

HermogenesThe one who has the craft.

SocratesVery well. And whose work will the teacher be using when he uses a name?

HermogenesI can’t say that either.

SocratesCan’t you say this either: who gives us the names we use?

HermogenesNo, I can’t.

SocratesDon’t you think it’s the law—custom—that hands them down?

HermogenesIt seems so.

SocratesSo the teacher, when he uses a name, will be using the work of a lawgiver?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesAnd do you think every man is a lawgiver, or only the one who has the craft?

HermogenesThe one who has the craft.

SocratesSo it isn’t every man’s business, Hermogenes, to give names. 389a It belongs to a name-maker. And this, it seems, is the lawgiver, who is the rarest of craftsmen among human beings.

HermogenesIt seems so.

SocratesCome now, consider what the lawgiver looks to when he gives names. Examine it in light of what we said before. What does the carpenter look to when he makes a shuttle? Isn’t it to something whose nature is to weave?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesWell, if the shuttle breaks while he’s making it, will he make another one by looking to the broken one? Or will he look to that form he was looking to when he made the one he broke?

HermogenesTo that form, I think.

SocratesThen wouldn’t we be entirely right to call that “what a shuttle itself is”?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesSo whenever he has to make a shuttle for a light garment or a heavy one, or for linen or wool or anything else, all of them must have the form of shuttle; but whatever nature is naturally finest for each kind, 389c that is the nature he must give to each product?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd the same goes for the other tools. He has to discover the tool that is naturally suited to each task and put it into the material he’s making it from—not as he himself would like, but as its nature is. For it seems he has to know how to put into iron the drill that is naturally suited to each task.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd how to put into wood the shuttle that is naturally suited to each.

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesFor each shuttle, it seems, is naturally suited to a particular kind of fabric, and the same holds for the rest.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen, my excellent friend, mustn’t that lawgiver of ours also know how to put into sounds and syllables the name that is naturally suited to each thing? And mustn’t he make and give all his names while looking to what a name itself is, if he’s going to be a genuine giver of names? And if different lawgivers don’t put names into the same syllables, we mustn’t 389e let that confuse us. After all, not every blacksmith puts the tool into the same iron, even when he’s making the same tool for the same purpose. Still, so long as he gives it the same form, even if 390a it’s in different iron, the tool is correct, whether someone makes it here or among non-Greeks. Isn’t that so?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen you’ll judge the lawgiver in the same way, whether he’s here or among non-Greeks. So long as he gives each thing the form of name that fits it, in whatever syllables, the lawgiver here is no worse than one anywhere else?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesNow who will know whether the right form of shuttle has been put into a given piece of wood? The one who made it, the carpenter, or the one who’ll use it, the weaver?

HermogenesMore likely the one who’ll use it, Socrates.

SocratesThen who will use the lyre-maker’s work? Isn’t it the person who’d know how best to supervise the making of it, and who’d recognize, once it was made, whether it had been made well or not?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesWho is that?

HermogenesThe lyre-player.

SocratesAnd who will use the shipwright’s work?

HermogenesThe helmsman.

SocratesAnd who would best supervise the lawgiver’s work and judge it once it was done, both here and among non-Greeks? Isn’t it the one who’ll use it?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd isn’t this the person who knows how to ask questions?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd the same person knows how to answer them?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd the person who knows how to ask and answer questions—do you call him anything but a dialectician?

HermogenesNo, that’s what I call him.

SocratesSo it’s a carpenter’s job to make a rudder, under a helmsman’s supervision, if the rudder is going to be a fine one.

HermogenesSo it seems.

SocratesAnd it’s a lawgiver’s job, it seems, to make a name, with a dialectician as his supervisor, if names are going to be given well.

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesSo it looks, Hermogenes, as if giving names isn’t a trivial matter, as you think, or a job for trivial people or for just anyone. And Cratylus is right when he says that it’s by nature 390e that things have their names, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names. Only the one who looks to the name that belongs to each thing by nature, and can put its form into letters and syllables, is one.

HermogenesI don’t see how I can 391a argue against what you’re saying, Socrates. But perhaps it isn’t easy to be persuaded so suddenly. I think I’d be more readily persuaded if you showed me what you say this natural correctness of a name is.

SocratesMy dear Hermogenes, I’m not saying it’s anything. You’ve forgotten what I said a little while ago: that I didn’t know, but would look into it with you. But now that we’ve been looking into it, you and I, this much at least is already clear, contrary to what we thought before: a name has a kind of natural correctness, and it isn’t 391b every man’s business to know how to give a name well to anything whatever. Isn’t that so?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen the next thing we have to look for, if you really want to know, is what its correctness actually is.

HermogenesWell, I certainly do want to know.

SocratesThen look into it.

HermogenesHow should I look into it?

SocratesThe most correct way to look into it, my friend, is with people who know, by paying them money and doing them favors. These are the sophists. Your brother 391c Callias paid them a lot of money, and now he has a reputation for wisdom. But since you don’t have control of your inheritance, you should plead with your brother and beg him to teach you the correctness about such things that he learned from Protagoras.note

HermogenesThat would be an odd request for me to make, Socrates, if I reject Protagoras’ Truth entirely but then welcomed what’s said in such a Truth as if it were worth something.

SocratesWell, if you don’t like that either, then you should learn 391d from Homer and the other poets.

HermogenesAnd what does Homer say about names, Socrates, and where?

SocratesIn many places. But the greatest and finest are the passages where he distinguishes between the names human beings and gods give to the same things. Don’t you think he says something great and wonderful about the correctness of names in those passages? For clearly the gods, at any rate, call things by the names that are correct by nature. 391e Or don’t you think so?

HermogenesI know perfectly well that if they call things anything, they call them correctly. But which passages do you mean?

SocratesDon’t you know that he says of the river at Troy that fought in single combat with Hephaestus, “whom the gods call Xanthus, but men Scamander”?note

HermogenesI do.

SocratesWell then, don’t you think it would be an impressive thing to know why it’s more correct to call that river Xanthus than Scamander? Or, if you like, take the bird of which he says, “the gods call it chalkis, but men kymindis”: do you think it a trivial lesson, how much more correct it is for the same bird to be called chalkis than kymindis? Or Batieia and Myrine, 392b and many other examples from this poet and others? But perhaps these things are too big for you and me to figure out. Scamandrius and Astyanax, though, which he says were the names of Hector’s son, are more within human reach, I think, and easier to examine: what correctness does he say these names have? You surely know the lines that contain what I mean.note

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen which of the two names do you think Homer considered more correctly given to the boy, “Astyanax” or “Scamandrius”?

HermogenesI can’t say.

SocratesLook at it this way, then. Suppose someone asked you who you think give names more correctly, the more intelligent or the less intelligent.

HermogenesThe more intelligent, obviously, I’d say.

SocratesAnd do you think the women in our cities are more intelligent than the men, taking each sex as a whole?

HermogenesThe men.

SocratesThen you know that Homer says Hector’s little boy 392d was called Astyanax by the Trojans. So obviously it was by the women that he was called Scamandrius, since the men, at any rate, called him Astyanax.

HermogenesSo it seems.

SocratesAnd Homer, too, considered the Trojans wiser than their wives?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesSo he thought “Astyanax” was more correctly given to the boy than “Scamandrius”?

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesThen let’s look into why. Or does he himself show us the reason, and beautifully? He says: 392e “For he alone defended their city and long walls.” That, it seems, is why it’s correct to call the savior’s son Astyanax, “lord (anax) of the city (asty)”—lord of the very thing his father was saving, as Homer says.note

HermogenesIt seems so to me.

SocratesBut why, exactly? I don’t understand it myself yet. Do you, Hermogenes?

HermogenesNo, by Zeus, I don’t.

SocratesWell, my good friend, didn’t Homer give Hector his name too?

HermogenesWhy do you ask?

SocratesBecause it seems to me that this name is pretty much like Astyanax, and both look like Greek names. The word anax (“lord”) and the name Hector mean almost the same thing: both are kingly names. Whatever a man is anax of, he is surely also hektōr (“holder”) of, since obviously he rules 393b it, possesses it, and holds (echei) it. Or do you think I’m talking nonsense, and fooling even myself when I imagine I’ve come upon a trace, as it were, of Homer’s view about the correctness of names?

HermogenesBy Zeus, I don’t think you’re fooling yourself. You may well be onto something.

SocratesIt seems only just to me, at any rate, to call a lion’s offspring a lion and a horse’s offspring a horse. I don’t mean if something other than a horse is born from a horse, like a monster. 393c I mean whatever is by nature the offspring of its kind. If a horse, contrary to nature, gives birth to a calf, the natural offspring of a cow, it should be called a calf, not a foal. Nor, I think, if what is born from a human being isn’t human offspring, should it be called human; only if the offspring is human. And the same goes for trees and everything else. Don’t you agree?

HermogenesI agree.

SocratesGood. But keep an eye on me, in case I trick you somehow. By the same reasoning, if some 393d offspring is born of a king, it should be called a king. Whether the same thing is signified in these syllables or in others makes no difference. Nor does it matter if a letter is added or taken away, so long as the essence of the thing, as revealed in the name, still prevails.

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

SocratesNothing complicated. You know that when we speak of the letters, we say their names, not the letters themselves—except for four: e, u, o and ō. To the 393e other vowels and the consonants, as you know, we add other letters when we say them, and so make names. But as long as we include the letter’s own power, plainly shown, it’s correct to call it by the name that will reveal it to us. Take “beta.” You see that adding eta, tau, and alpha did no harm: it didn’t stop the whole name from revealing the nature of the letter the lawgiver wanted to name. That’s how well he knew how to give the letters their names.note

HermogenesI think what you say is true.

SocratesDoesn’t the same argument hold for a king? From a king, sooner or later, there’ll be a king; from a good man, a good one; from a fine one, a fine one; and so with everything else—from each kind another offspring of the same sort, unless a monster is born. So they should be called by the same names. But the syllables can be varied, so that to the layman names that are the same seem different from each other. It’s like doctors’ drugs: dressed up with various colors and smells, they look different to us though they’re the same, while to the 394b doctor, since he looks at the power of the drugs, they look the same, and he isn’t thrown by the additions. In the same way, perhaps, someone who knows about names looks at their power, and isn’t thrown if a letter is added, or transposed, or taken away, or even if the power of the name lies in entirely different letters.

HermogenesAbsolutely.

SocratesSo those born according to nature should be given the same names.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd what about those born contrary to nature, who come out as a kind of monster? For example, when an impious son is born to a good and god-fearing man. Isn’t it just as in our earlier example, where a horse gave birth to a cow’s offspring? Surely it ought to bear the name not of the parent but of the kind it belongs to?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo the impious son of a pious father should be given the name of his kind.

HermogenesThat’s right.

SocratesNot “Theophilus” (“dear to the gods”), it seems, or “Mnesitheus” (“mindful of the gods”), or anything of that sort, but something that signifies the opposite—if names are to be correct.

HermogenesAbsolutely, Socrates.

SocratesJust as “Orestes,” too, Hermogenes, may well be correct, whether it was chance that gave him the name or some poet. It shows the brutishness of his nature, his savagery, his wild mountain (oros) side.

HermogenesSo it seems, Socrates.

SocratesAnd his father’s name also seems to accord with nature.

HermogenesApparently.

Socrates“Agamemnon” is likely to be the sort of man who toils and perseveres at whatever he has resolved, bringing his resolutions to completion through excellence. The sign of this is his staying (monē) at Troy, with all the suffering and endurance it took. So the name “Agamemnon” indicates that this man is admirable (agastos) for his 395b staying power (epimonē). And perhaps “Atreus” is correct too. His murder of Chrysippus, and the cruelties he committed against Thyestes—all these were damaging and ruinous (atēra) to excellence. So the name’s meaning is slightly bent and veiled, so as not to reveal the man’s nature to everyone. But to those who understand names, “Atreus” reveals well enough what it means. For whether you take it from the stubborn (ateires), 395c the fearless (atreston), or the ruinous (atēron), the name is correctly given to him in every way.note

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesIt’s like what they say of him: when he murdered Myrtilus, he was quite unable to foresee or take thought for the distant consequences for his whole family, how much 395d misfortune he was filling it with. He saw only what was near and immediate—that’s what pelas (“near”) means—when he was so eager to win Hippodamia’s hand by any means. As for Tantalus, anyone would think his name was given correctly and according to nature, if what they say about him is true.note

HermogenesWhat do they say?

SocratesThe many terrible misfortunes that befell him while he was still alive, which in the end overturned his entire homeland. And then, after his death, in Hades, the swaying of the stone over his head—its talanteia— 395e which is remarkably in tune with his name. It’s exactly as if someone wanting to call him talantatos (“most wretched”) had disguised the word and said “Tantalus” instead. Something like that is the name chance and legend seem to have supplied for him. And his father, said to be Zeus, 396a also seems to have a superbly given name, though it isn’t easy to grasp.note

HermogenesReally, Socrates, you seem to me exactly like someone possessed who suddenly starts chanting oracles.

SocratesYes, Hermogenes, and I mostly blame Euthyphro of Prospalta for its falling on me. I was with him for a long time this morning, lending him my ears. So it looks as if, in his possessed state, he’s not only filled my ears with his superhuman wisdom but taken hold of my soul as well. So I think 396e this is what we should do: for today, make use of it and examine the rest of the names; but tomorrow, if you two agree, we’ll exorcise it and purify ourselves, once we’ve found someone who’s good at that sort of 397a purification, whether one of the priests or one of the sophists.note

HermogenesI’m all for it. I’d be very glad to hear the rest about names.

SocratesThen that’s what we must do. Where would you like us to begin our examination, now that we’ve hit on a kind of outline? We want to find out whether the names themselves will bear witness for us that each was not given just at random, but has 397b some correctness. Now, the names of heroes and human beings might well deceive us. Many of them were given after the names of ancestors, and sometimes don’t fit at all, as we were saying at the start; and many are given as if in prayer, like “Eutychides” (“lucky”), “Sosias” (“safe and sound”), “Theophilus,” and plenty of others. I think we should leave names of that sort alone. We’re most likely to find correctly given names among the things that always are and exist by nature. For it’s here 397c most of all that the giving of names ought to have been done with care. Perhaps some of them were even given by a power more divine than human.

HermogenesI think you’re right, Socrates.

SocratesThen isn’t it only right to begin with the gods, and look at how the gods ever came to be correctly called by this very name, theoi?

HermogenesThat makes sense.

SocratesWell, here’s what I suspect. It seems to me that the first human beings in Greece believed only in those 397d gods that many non-Greeks believe in now: the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars, and the heavens. Since they saw them all always on the move, running (theonta) their course, they named them theoi from this nature of theirs, running (thein). Later, when they came to know the other gods, they addressed them all by this name too. Is there anything true in what I’m saying, or nothing?

HermogenesThere certainly seems to be.

SocratesThen what should we look at after this?

HermogenesObviously spirits, heroes, and human beings.

SocratesYes, truly, Hermogenes—what could the name daimones (“spirits”) mean? See whether you think there’s anything in what I say.

HermogenesJust tell me.

SocratesDo you know who Hesiod says the spirits are?

HermogenesI can’t think.

SocratesNot even that he says the first race of human beings was a golden one?

HermogenesThat much I do know.

SocratesWell, he says of it: “But since fate has covered over this race, 398a they are called holy spirits beneath the earth, noble, warders-off of evil, guardians of mortal human beings.”note

HermogenesWell, what of it?

SocratesI think he means that the golden race wasn’t made of gold, but was good and fine. My evidence is that he says we are an iron race.

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesSo don’t you think that if anyone among people today 398b is good, he’d say that person belongs to that golden race?

HermogenesVery likely.

SocratesAnd are good people anything other than people of understanding?

HermogenesPeople of understanding.

SocratesThen this, I think, is above all what he means by spirits. Because they had understanding and were knowing (daēmones), he named them daimones. And in fact in our old dialect this very word occurs. So he’s right—he and the many other poets who say that when a good man dies he has a great portion and honor, and becomes a 398c spirit, in keeping with the name for understanding. So I too lay it down that every man who is good is knowing (daēmōn), is divine (daimonios) both in life and in death, and is correctly called a spirit (daimōn).

HermogenesAnd I think, Socrates, I’m entirely with you on this. But what would “hero” (hērōs) be?

SocratesThat’s not very hard to grasp. Their name has been altered only slightly, and it shows that they were born from love (erōs).

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

SocratesDon’t you know that the heroes are demigods?

HermogenesSo what?

SocratesSurely they were all born when a god fell in love with a mortal woman or a mortal man with a goddess. If you consider this, too, in the old Attic dialect, you’ll understand better. It will show you that the name has been only slightly altered from the name of love, from which the heroes were born, for the sake of making a name. Either that’s what “heroes” means, or else that they were wise, skilled speakers (rhētores), clever, and dialecticians, good at asking questions (erōtan)—for eirein means “to speak.” So, as we were just saying, when they’re named in the Attic dialect, 398e the heroes turn out to be speakers and questioners of a sort, so that the heroic tribe turns out to be a race of orators and sophists. But that’s not the hard one to grasp. Harder is the name of human beings: why in the world are they called anthrōpoi? Or can you say?

HermogenesHow could I, my good friend? Even if I were able to find something, I wouldn’t strain myself, because I think you’re more likely to find it than I am.

SocratesYou’re putting your faith in Euthyphro’s inspiration, it seems.

HermogenesObviously.

SocratesAnd you’re right to. Even now I seem to have had a clever idea, and if I’m not careful, I’ll be in danger of becoming wiser than I ought to before the day is out. Look at what I’m saying. First, we need to bear in mind this point about names: we often insert letters and take others out, so that the name departs from what we mean, and we change the accents. Take Dii philos (“dear to Zeus”). So that 399b it would become a name for us instead of a phrase, we took out one of its iotas and pronounced the middle syllable with a low pitch instead of a high one. With other names, conversely, we insert letters, and pronounce low-pitched syllables higher.note

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesWell, the name of human beings has undergone one of these changes, I think. It has become a name from a phrase, with one letter, alpha, taken out and the ending lowered in pitch.

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

SocratesThis. The name anthrōpos (“human being”) signifies that the other animals don’t examine, or reason about, or look up at (anathrei) anything they see, whereas a human being, as soon as he has seen—that’s what opōpe means—both looks up at and reasons about what he has seen. That’s why the human being, alone among the animals, was correctly named anthrōpos: anathrōn ha opōpe, “one who looks up at what he has seen.”

HermogenesWhat comes next, then? May I ask you something I’d be glad to find out?

SocratesCertainly.

HermogenesWell, it seems to me there’s something that comes right after these. We speak, I suppose, of a human being’s “soul” (psychē) and “body” (sōma).

SocratesOf course.

HermogenesLet’s try to take these apart too, the way we did the earlier ones.

SocratesYou mean examine how reasonably the soul has come by this name, and then the body?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesWell, speaking off the cuff, I think those who named the soul had something like this in mind: that when it’s present in the body, it is the cause of the body’s living, supplying it with the power to 399e breathe and refreshing it (anapsychon), and that as soon as this refreshing force fails, the body perishes and dies. That, I think, is why they called it psychē. But if you like—wait a moment. I think I can make out something more persuasive than this, 400a at least to Euthyphro and his circle. They would scorn this one, I think, and consider it crude. But look at this one and see whether you like it too.

HermogenesJust tell me.

SocratesWhat do you think holds and carries the nature of the whole body, so that it lives and moves about, if not soul?

HermogenesNothing else.

SocratesWell then, don’t you believe Anaxagoras that the nature of everything else, too, is ordered and held by mind and soul?note

HermogenesI do.

SocratesThen it would be a fine name to give this power, which carries (ochei) and holds (echei) nature (physis): physechē. And one may also, to be elegant, say psychē.

HermogenesAbsolutely. And this one seems to me more expert than the other.

SocratesSo it is. All the same, it does sound truly ridiculous when it’s pronounced the way it was originally given.

HermogenesWell, what shall we say about the next one?

SocratesYou mean the body?

HermogenesYes.

HermogenesThat seems to me well enough said, Socrates. But what about the names of the gods, like what you were saying just now about Zeus? Could we examine them the same way, and see on what principle of correctness their names were given?

SocratesYes, by Zeus, Hermogenes, we could—if we had any sense. There is one way, the finest: to say that we know nothing about the gods, either about them or about the names they call themselves, whatever those may be. For clearly they, at least, call themselves by the true ones. 400e Then there’s a second kind of correctness. In our prayers it’s our custom to address the gods by whatever names, and from whatever origin, they like to be called. In the same way we should call them by those names ourselves, since we know nothing else. 401a That seems to me a fine custom. So, if you like, let’s investigate as though we had first announced to the gods that we won’t investigate anything about them, since we don’t consider ourselves capable of it. We will investigate human beings instead, and what opinion they held when they gave the gods their names. No god could resent that.

HermogenesWell, Socrates, I think you’re being reasonable. Let’s do that.

SocratesThen shouldn’t we begin with Hestia, as custom requires?

HermogenesIt’s only right, at any rate.

SocratesThen what would anyone say the person who named Hestia had in mind when he named her?

HermogenesBy Zeus, I don’t think that one’s easy either.

SocratesWell, my good Hermogenes, it looks as though the first people to lay down names were no simpletons. They were some sort of stargazers and babblers.

HermogenesWhy do you say so?

SocratesIt’s quite plain to me that the giving of names was the work of people like that, 401c and if you look closely at foreign names, you find what each one means just as well. Take what we call ousia (“being”). Some people call it essia, and others again ōsia. First, then, going by one of these names, essia, it makes sense that the being of things should be called Hestia. And since we say that whatever partakes of being estin (“is”), on this ground too it would be correctly called Hestia. It seems that we too called ousia essia in the old days. Moreover, if you think about the sacrifices, 401d you’d conclude that the name-makers understood things this way. For it’s natural that people who called the being of all things essia should sacrifice to Hestia first, before all the other gods.

HermogenesWhy do you say that, Socrates?

SocratesMy good friend, I’ve just noticed a whole swarm of wisdom.

HermogenesWhat sort of swarm?

SocratesIt sounds quite ridiculous to say it, but I think it has a certain plausibility.

HermogenesWhat is it?

SocratesI seem to see Heraclitus saying some ancient pieces of wisdom, straight out of the days of Cronus and Rhea, things Homer said too.

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

HermogenesSo he does.

SocratesWell then? Do you think that whoever gave the names “Rhea” and “Cronus” to the ancestors of the other gods had anything different in mind from Heraclitus? Do you suppose it was by chance that he gave both of them names of streams? Homer, likewise, speaks of “Ocean, origin of the gods, and mother Tethys,” and so does Hesiod, I think. And Orpheus says somewhere, “Fair-flowing Ocean was the first to marry; 402c he wed his sister Tethys, born of the same mother.” See how these agree with one another, and how they all point toward Heraclitus’ views.note

HermogenesYou seem to me to be onto something, Socrates. But I don’t see what the name of Tethys means.

SocratesThat one practically tells you itself: it’s the name of a spring in disguise. For what is sifted through (diattōmenon) and 402d what is strained (ēthoumenon) are images of a spring, and the name Tēthys is put together from both these words.

HermogenesThat’s clever, Socrates.

SocratesHow could it not be? But what comes next? We’ve talked about Zeus.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen let’s talk about his brothers, Poseidon and Pluto, and the other name people call Pluto by.

HermogenesBy all means.

SocratesWell, it seems to me Poseidon got his name 402e from the first person to name him because the nature of the sea held him back as he was walking and wouldn’t let him go any further. It became a kind of fetter on his feet. So he named the god who rules over this power Poseidōn, as being a posidesmos (“foot-fetter”). The epsilon was perhaps put in to make it sound better. Or perhaps that isn’t what it means. Perhaps at first it was pronounced with two lambdas instead of the sigma, 403a because the god knows many things. Or perhaps he was named “the shaker” from seiein (“to shake”), with the pi and the delta added.note

HermogenesAnd how does it look to you, Socrates?

SocratesI think people are mistaken in many ways about this god’s power, and they fear him when they have no reason to. They’re afraid because, once any of us has died, we stay there forever. And they’re terrified, too, that the soul goes off to him stripped of the body. But to me all of this seems to point the same way, both the god’s office and his name.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesI’ll tell you how it looks to me, at any rate. Tell me: of the bonds that keep any living creature in any place, which is stronger, necessity or desire?

HermogenesDesire, by far, Socrates.

SocratesThen don’t you think many people would escape from Hades if he didn’t bind those who go there with the strongest bond?

HermogenesObviously.

SocratesSo it seems he binds them with some desire and not with necessity, if he binds them with the greatest bond.

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesNow, there are many desires, aren’t there?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThen he binds them with the greatest of all desires, if he’s going to hold them with the greatest bond.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd is there any desire greater than the one you feel when you’re with someone and believe that through him you’ll become a better man?

HermogenesBy Zeus, none at all, Socrates.

SocratesThen let’s say, Hermogenes, that this is why no one there wants to come back here, not even the Sirens themselves. 403e They and all the others have been put under a spell, so beautiful, it seems, are the words Hades knows how to speak. And by this account the god is a perfect sophist and a great benefactor to those who are with him. He even sends up so many good things to us here. That’s how much he has to spare down there, and that’s how he got the name “Pluto.”

HermogenesYou may be onto something, Socrates.

SocratesAnd the name Haidēs, Hermogenes, is far from coming from “the unseen.” It’s much more likely that the lawgiver called him Haidēs from his knowing (eidenai) all fine things.

HermogenesAll right. And what do we say about Demeter, Hera, Apollo, Athena, Hephaestus, Ares, and the other gods?

SocratesDemeter seems to have been called Dēmētēr from her giving of food (edōdē), giving it like a mother (mētēr). Hera is a kind of eratē (“lovely one”), 404c just as Zeus is in fact said to have married her out of love. Or perhaps the lawgiver, with his head in the heavens, named the air (aēr) Hēra in disguise, putting the beginning at the end. You’d see it if you said Hera’s name over and over. Then there’s Pherrephatta. Many people are afraid of this name too, and of “Apollo,” out of inexperience, it seems, in the correctness of names. They change it and look at the form Phersephonē, and it seems frightening to them. But in fact it reveals 404d that the goddess is wise. Since things are in motion (pheromena), what grasps them, touches (epaphōn) them, and is able to keep up with them would be wisdom.note

HermogenesOf course I have, and you’re right.

SocratesBut in fact, as I see it, the name is beautifully suited to the god’s power.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesI’ll try to explain how it looks to me. There’s no 405a single name that could better suit the god’s four powers, so as to touch on all of them and in a way make plain his music, his prophecy, his medicine, and his archery.

HermogenesGo on, then. It sounds like a strange name you’re describing.

SocratesNo, a harmonious one, since the god is a musician. First of all, purification and purifying rites, in medicine and in prophecy alike, and fumigations with sulfur, both with medicinal 405b drugs and with prophetic ones, and the baths that go with such things, and the sprinklings—all of these would have one effect: to make a person pure in both body and soul. Isn’t that so?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd isn’t this the god who purifies, who washes away (apolouōn) and releases (apolyōn) people from evils like these?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo, with reference to his releasings and washings, 405c since he is the physician for such things, he would correctly be called Apolouōn (“the one who washes away”). With reference to prophecy, and to truth and simplicity—for these are the same thing—he would be most correctly called by the name the Thessalians use for him: all the Thessalians call this god Aploun (“the simple one”). And because he is always (aei) master of his shots (bolai) in archery, he is Aeiballōn (“the ever-shooting”).

HermogenesWhat about Dionysus and Aphrodite?

SocratesThose are big questions, son of Hipponicus. But in fact the names of these gods can be explained in two ways, seriously 406c and playfully. For the serious explanation you’ll have to ask someone else, but nothing stops me from going through the playful one, since the gods love a joke too. Dionysus would be the one who gives (didous) wine (oinos), playfully called Didoinysos. And wine, since it makes most drinkers think (oiesthai) they have sense (nous) when they don’t, would most justly be called oionous. As for Aphrodite, it isn’t worth contradicting Hesiod. 406d We should agree that she was called Aphroditē because she was born from the foam (aphros).

HermogenesBut you’re an Athenian, Socrates, so you surely won’t forget Athena—or Hephaestus and Ares either.

SocratesThat would hardly be likely.

HermogenesNo, it wouldn’t.

SocratesWell, one of her names isn’t hard to account for.

HermogenesWhich one?

SocratesWe call her Pallas, don’t we?

HermogenesOf course.

SocratesWe’d be right, I think, to suppose this name was given from the dance in armor. 406e For lifting oneself or something else up, whether off the ground or in 407a the hands, is what we call pallein and pallesthai (“to brandish” and “to leap”), or making something dance and dancing.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo that’s where Pallas comes from.

HermogenesAnd rightly too. But how do you explain her other name?

SocratesAthena?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesThat’s a weightier matter, my friend. It seems the ancients thought about Athena the way present-day experts on Homer do. 407b Most of them, when they interpret the poet, say that he made Athena mind (nous) and thought (dianoia) personified. And the maker of names seems to have had some such idea about her. Speaking of her still more grandly as god’s intellect (theou noēsis), he says, as it were, that she is ha theonoa (“the mind of god”), using alpha in place of eta, the foreign way, and removing the iota and the sigma. Or perhaps not that. Perhaps he called her Theonoē because she understands divine things (ta theia noei) better than anyone else. And nothing rules out that he wanted to call the goddess Ēthonoē, as being understanding in character (ēthos). 407c Then either he himself or others later altered it to something finer, as they thought, and called her Athēnaa.

HermogenesAnd what about Hephaestus? How do you explain him?

SocratesYou’re asking about the noble “master of light” (phaeos histōr)?

HermogenesIt looks that way.

SocratesIsn’t it obvious to everyone that he is Phaistos, with an eta tacked on in front?

HermogenesProbably—unless, it seems, you come up with yet another idea.

SocratesWell, so that I don’t, ask me about Ares.

HermogenesI’m asking.

SocratesWell, if you like, he’d be Arēs from the male (arren) and the manly. Or again, from what is hard and unbending, which is called arraton (“rigid”), and on that ground too it would suit a god of war in every way to be called Arēs.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen, for the gods’ sake, let’s get away from the gods, since I’m afraid to discuss them. But put any other names you like to me, “so you may see what” Euthyphro’s “horses are like.”note

HermogenesI will, but first just one more question, about Hermes, since Cratylus says I’m not Hermogenes. Let’s try to examine Hermēs and see what the name means, so we can also find out whether he has a point.

SocratesWell, this name Hermēs seems to have something to do with speech. Being an interpreter (hermēneus) and a messenger, and 408a being thievish and deceptive in words, and good at bargaining—this whole business has to do with the power of speech. Now, as we were saying earlier, eirein (“to speak”) is the use of speech, and emēsato, a word Homer uses in many places, means “he devised.” From both of these, then, the lawgiver, as it were, instructs 408b us about this god who devised speaking and speech—and speaking is eirein: “Human beings, the one who devised speaking (eirein emēsato) would justly be called Eiremēs by you.” Nowadays, prettifying the name, as we suppose, we call him Hermēs. And Iris too seems to have been named from eirein, because she was a messenger.

HermogenesBy Zeus, then I think Cratylus is right when he says I’m not Hermogenes. I’m certainly no good at devising speeches.

SocratesAnd it makes sense, my friend, that Pan, the double-natured, is Hermes’ son.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesYou know that speech signifies everything (to pan), and is always circling and revolving (polei), and that it is double, true and false.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen the true part of it is smooth and divine and dwells above among the gods, while the false part dwells below among most human beings, and is rough and tragikon (“goatish,” but also “tragic”). For it’s down here, in the tragic life, that most myths and falsehoods are found.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo the one who reveals everything (pan) and is always moving it (aei polōn) would rightly be 408d Pan aipolos (“Pan the goatherd”), the double-natured son of Hermes, smooth in his upper parts and rough and goat-shaped below. And Pan is either speech or the brother of speech, if he really is Hermes’ son, and there’s nothing surprising in a brother resembling his brother. But as I was saying, my blessed friend, let’s get away from the gods.

HermogenesFrom gods like these, Socrates, if you like. But what’s stopping you from going through things of another sort, such as the sun, the moon, the stars, earth, ether, air, fire, 408e water, the seasons, and the year?

SocratesThat’s a lot you’re ordering me to do. Still, if it will please you, I’m willing.

HermogenesOh, it will.

SocratesSo what do you want first? Shall we go through the sun, as you said?

HermogenesBy all means.

SocratesWell, it looks as though it would become clearer if 409a one used the Doric name, because the Dorians call it halios. So halios might come from its halizein (“gathering”) people together in one place when it rises. Or it might come from its always heilein (“rolling”) around the earth as it goes. Or it could be because, as it goes, it poikillei (“makes many-colored”) the things that grow from the earth, and poikillein and aiolein are the same thing.note

HermogenesAnd what about selēnē (“moon”)?

SocratesNow this name looks as if it puts Anaxagoras in a tight spot.

HermogenesWhy’s that?

SocratesIt seems to show that what he was saying only recently is actually much older, 409b namely that the moon gets its light from the sun.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesSelas (“gleam”) and phōs (“light”) are the same thing, I take it.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd this light around the moon is always neon and henon (“new” and “old”), if what Anaxagoras’ followers say is true. As the sun goes around the moon in its circle, it’s always casting new light on it, while the light from the previous month is still there as old light.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesAnd lots of people call it Selanaia.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSince it always has a selas that is neon and henon, Selaenoneoaeia 409c would be the most fitting of all names to call it. Squeezed together, it’s been called Selanaia.

HermogenesThat name belongs in a dithyramb, Socrates! But what do you say about the month and the stars?note

SocratesMeis (“month”) would be correctly called meiēs, from meiousthai (“to wane”). The astra (“stars”) seem to take their name from astrapē (“lightning”). And because astrapē anastrephei ta ōpa (“turns the eyes upward”), it would be anastrōpē. Now it’s been prettified and is called astrapē.

HermogenesAnd what about fire and water?

SocratesPyr (“fire”) has me stumped. Either Euthyphro’s muse has deserted me, or this one is extremely difficult. So consider the device I bring in for all the cases like this that stump me.

HermogenesWhat device?

SocratesI’ll tell you. Answer me this: could you say in what way pyr gets its name?

HermogenesNo, by Zeus, I couldn’t.

SocratesThen consider what I suspect about it. It occurs to me 409e that the Greeks, especially those who live under non-Greek rule, have taken many names from non-Greeks.

HermogenesSo what?

SocratesIf someone tried to work out how these names were fittingly given according to the Greek language, and not according to the language the name actually comes from, you know he’d be stumped.

HermogenesNaturally.

SocratesWell then, see whether this name pyr isn’t something foreign as well. It isn’t easy to connect it with the Greek language, and the Phrygians plainly call it that, with a slight variation. The same goes for hydōr (“water”), kynes (“dogs”), and many others.note

HermogenesThat’s so.

SocratesSo we mustn’t force these, since one could still say something about them. That’s how I’m setting fire and water 410b aside. But air, Hermogenes: is it called aēr because it airei (“lifts”) things off the earth? Or because it aei rhei (“always flows”)? Or because wind arises from it as it flows? After all, the poets call the winds aētai. So perhaps the name means aētorrhoun (“wind-flow”), as if one said pneumatorrhoun, and that’s what the name-maker means when he says it is aēr. As for aithēr (“upper air”), I understand it something like this: because it always thei (“runs”), flowing around the air, it would rightly be called aeitheēr. And gē (“earth”) shows what it means better if one 410c calls it gaia. Gaia would correctly be called “the one who gives birth,” as Homer says, since by gegaasin he means “have been born.”

HermogenesThe seasons, Socrates, and the two words for “year,” eniautos and etos.

SocratesWell, hōrai (“seasons”) should be pronounced the old Attic way, if you want to know the likely explanation. They are HORAI because they horizein (“mark off”) winters and summers, the winds, and the crops that come from the earth; and as things that mark off they would rightly be called horai. 410d Eniautos and etos are probably one thing. Take what brings to light each of the things that grow and come into being in its turn, and examines it within itself. Earlier we saw Zeus’s name split in two, with some calling him Zēna and others Dia. In the same way, some here call this eniautos, because it does this en heautōi (“within itself”), and others etos, because it etazei (“examines”). The whole phrase is en heautōi etazon (“examining within itself”), and this single thing is addressed in two ways, so that two names, eniautos and 410e etos, have come from one phrase.note

HermogenesWell, Socrates, you really are making great strides.

SocratesI think I must already look as though I’m driving far down the road of wisdom.

HermogenesYou certainly do.

SocratesYou’ll soon say so even more.

HermogenesWell, after names of this kind, I’d be glad to see by what correctness those fine names concerned with excellence were given, such as phronēsis (“understanding”), synesis (“comprehension”), dikaiosynē (“justice”), and all the rest of that kind.

SocratesYou’re stirring up no trivial family of names, my friend. Still, since I’ve put on the lion’s skin, I mustn’t lose my nerve. It seems I have to examine phronēsis, synesis, gnōmē (“judgment”), epistēmē (“knowledge”), and all the other 411b fine names you mention.note

HermogenesWe certainly mustn’t give up before we start.

SocratesAnd, by the dog, I don’t think the hunch that struck me just now is a bad one. The very ancient people who gave names were, more than anything, like most of our wise men today: from constantly spinning around as they search for how things are, they get dizzy, and then things seem to them to be going around and to be in motion in every 411c way. And they don’t blame the condition inside themselves for this opinion. Instead they hold that things themselves are by nature like this: that nothing in them is stable or firm, but they are flowing and moving and always full of every kind of motion and coming-to-be. I say this because it occurred to me in connection with all the names we’ve just mentioned.

HermogenesHow’s that, Socrates?

SocratesPerhaps you didn’t notice that the names just mentioned are given entirely on the assumption that things are moving and flowing and coming to be.

HermogenesI hadn’t really thought about it.

SocratesWell, to start with, the first one we mentioned is given entirely as if to things of that sort.

HermogenesWhich one?

SocratesPhronēsis. It is phoras kai rhou noēsis (“the understanding of motion and flow”). One could also take it as onēsis phoras (“the benefit of motion”), but either way it has to do with being in motion. And if you like, gnōmē plainly indicates gonēs skepsis kai nōmēsis (“the examining and pondering of begetting”), since nōman (“to ponder”) and skopein (“to examine”) are the same thing. Or if you like, noēsis (“thought”) itself is tou neou hesis (“the longing for the new”). For things to be new signifies 411e that they are always coming to be, so the person who gave the name neoesis is indicating that the soul longs for this. In the old days it wasn’t called noēsis: instead of the eta you had to say two epsilons, noeesis. And sōphrosynē (“moderation”) is the sōtēria (“preservation”) of what we’ve just examined, 412a understanding.

As for dikaiosynē, it’s easy to guess that this name is given to the synesis (“comprehension”) of the dikaion (“just”). But dikaion itself is difficult. In fact it seems to be agreed up to a point 412d by many people, and after that it’s disputed. Those who think that the universe is in motion suppose that most of it is the kind of thing that does nothing but move along, and that through all of this passes something by means of which everything that comes to be comes to be. This, they say, is the swiftest and the finest thing there is. For it couldn’t pass through all that is unless it were so fine that nothing could keep it out, and so swift that it treated everything else as if it were standing still. Since, then, it governs all the 412e other things by diaïon (“passing through”) them, it was rightly given the name dikaion, taking on the sound of kappa to make it easier to say.

HermogenesIt seems to me, Socrates, that you’ve heard this from someone and aren’t just making it up as you go.

SocratesAnd the rest?

HermogenesNot really.

SocratesThen listen. Perhaps I can trick you into thinking that I haven’t heard the rest from anyone either. After justice, what’s left for us? Courage, I think; we haven’t gone through that yet. Injustice, 413e clearly, is a hindrance of what passes through. And andreia (“courage”) signifies that courage got its name in battle; and battle in what is, if what is flows, is nothing but a counter-flow. So if you take the delta out of the name andreia, the name anreia itself indicates what it does. Clearly, then, courage isn’t the counter-flow to every flow, but to the flow running contrary 414a to the just; otherwise courage wouldn’t be praised. And arrhen (“male”) and anēr (“man”) refer to something close to this, to the anō rhoē (“upward flow”). And gynē (“woman”) seems to me to mean gonē (“birth”).note

HermogenesIt looks that way, Socrates.

SocratesAnd thallein (“to bloom”) itself seems to me to depict the growth of the young, because it’s quick and sudden. 414b That’s just what the name-maker imitated with the name, putting it together from thein (“to run”) and hallesthai (“to leap”). But you aren’t watching me—I’m practically running off the track once I hit smooth ground. And we still have plenty left of the names that seem important.

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesOne of which is to see what on earth technē (“craft”) means.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesDoesn’t it signify hexis nou (“possession of mind”), if you take away the tau 414c and put an omicron between the chi and the nu, and between the nu and the eta?note

HermogenesThat’s quite a strain, Socrates.

SocratesMy dear fellow, don’t you know that the primary names given have long since been buried by people who want to dress them up in tragic style? They add letters and take them out for the sake of euphony, and twist them in every direction, partly for embellishment and partly through the passage of time. Take katoptron (“mirror”): don’t you think it odd that the rho has been put in? I think this is the sort of thing done by people who care nothing for 414d truth and only for how the words feel in the mouth. By piling more and more onto the primary names, they end up making it impossible for a single human being to understand what the name means. That’s how they call the Sphinx Sphinx instead of Phix, and there are many other examples.

HermogenesThat’s so, Socrates.

SocratesOn the other hand, if you allow people to put into names and take out of them whatever they like, it will be all too easy, and anyone could fit any name to any thing.

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesTrue indeed. But I think you, as our wise supervisor, must keep a watch on due measure and plausibility.

HermogenesI’d like to.

SocratesAnd I’d like that with you, Hermogenes. But don’t be 415a too exacting, my good friend, “lest you sap me of my strength.” I’m coming to the summit of what I’ve been saying, once we’ve looked at mēchanē (“contrivance”) after technē. Mēchanē seems to me to be a sign of anein epi poly (“achieving a great deal”), since mēkos (“length”) in a way signifies “a great deal.” So the name mēchanē is made up of these two, mēkos and anein. But, as I was just saying, we must get to the summit of what has been said: we have to look into what the names aretē (“excellence”) and kakia (“badness”) 415b mean. One of them I can’t yet make out, but the other seems to me perfectly clear, since it fits with everything that came before.note

HermogenesAnd kakon (“bad”), which you’ve used to explain many of the earlier names: what could that name mean?

SocratesSomething strange, by Zeus, it seems to me, and hard to make out. So I’ll bring that device of mine to bear on this one too.

HermogenesWhich one?

SocratesSaying that this one too is something foreign.

HermogenesAnd you may well be right. But if you agree, let’s leave these and try to see how kalon (“beautiful,” “fine”) and aischron (“shameful”) are reasonably named.

SocratesWell, it already seems to me 416b perfectly clear what aischron means, since it too fits with what came before. The name-maker seems to me to disparage, at every turn, whatever hinders things and ischon (“holds them back”) from their flow. And here he gave the name aeischoroun to what aei ischei ton rhoun (“always holds back the flow”). But now they’ve squeezed it together and call it aischron.

HermogenesAnd what about kalon?

SocratesThat’s harder to understand. And yet it says it outright: it’s been altered only in its accent and in the length of the omicron.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesThis name seems to be a name for dianoia (“thought”).

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

SocratesTell me, what do you think is the cause of each thing’s being klēthēnai (“called”) what it is? Isn’t it whatever gave the names?

HermogenesOf course, I suppose.

SocratesAnd wouldn’t this be the thought of gods, or of human beings, or of both?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd isn’t what kalesan (“called”) things and what kaloun (“calls”) them one and the same thing, namely thought?

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesAnd whatever mind and thought produce is praiseworthy, and whatever they don’t is blameworthy?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesNow, what practices medicine produces works of medicine, and what practices carpentry produces works of carpentry? Or how would you put it?

HermogenesThat’s how I’d put it.

SocratesAnd so what kaloun (“calls”) produces kala (“fine things”)?

HermogenesIt must, surely.

SocratesAnd this, we say, is thought?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesSo this name kalon is rightly a name for the understanding that produces the sort of things we call fine and welcome.

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesSo what do we still have left of this kind?

HermogenesThe ones connected with the good and the fine: sympheronta (“advantageous”), 417a lysitelounta (“profitable”), ōphelima (“beneficial”), kerdalea (“gainful”), and their opposites.

SocratesWell, by now you could probably find sympheron for yourself if you looked back at what we said earlier, since it seems to be a sibling of epistēmē. It shows nothing other than the soul’s moving along together with things. And what is done by something like that seems to have been called sympheronta and symphora from symperipheresthai (“being carried around together”). And kerdaleon comes from 417b kerdos (“gain”). Kerdos shows what it means if you put a nu back into the name in place of the delta, since it names the good in another way. Because the good kerannytai (“is mixed”) into everything as it passes through, the name-maker named this power of it when he gave the name. But by putting in a delta in place of the nu, he pronounced it kerdos.

HermogenesAnd what about lysiteloun (“profitable”)?

SocratesIt seems, Hermogenes, that he doesn’t mean it the way tradespeople use the word, of something that pays back (apolyē) its outlay. That isn’t the sense in which, 417c I think, he says lysiteloun. Rather, the good is the swiftest of all that is. It doesn’t let things stand still, or let the motion of their being carried along reach an end (telos) and halt and stop. Instead it always releases (lyei) any end that tries to arise in that motion, and keeps it unceasing and immortal. That, I think, is why he applied the name lysiteloun to the good: he called what releases the end of motion lysiteloun. Ōphelimon (“beneficial”) is a foreign name, from ophellein, which Homer uses in many places. It’s a name for increasing and making.

HermogenesAnd how do we stand with the opposites of these?

SocratesThe ones that simply negate them don’t need to be gone through, as far as I can see.

HermogenesWhich ones are those?

SocratesAsymphoron (“disadvantageous”), anōpheles (“unbeneficial”), alysiteles (“unprofitable”), and akerdes (“ungainful”).

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesBut blaberon (“harmful”) and zēmiōdes (“damaging”) are another matter.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesNow, blaberon says that it is what 417e harms (blapton) the flow (rhous). Blapton, in turn, signifies what wants to fasten (boulomenon haptein). Fastening is the same as binding, and binding is something he finds fault with everywhere. So what wants to fasten the flow would most correctly be boulapteroun. But I think it has been prettied up and is called blaberon.

HermogenesThe names certainly come out intricate when you handle them, Socrates! Just now, when you produced that name 418a boulapteroun, you sounded to me as if you were puffing out the prelude to the Hymn of Athena on the pipes.note

SocratesI’m not to blame, Hermogenes. The people who gave the name are.

HermogenesTrue. But then what would zēmiōdes be?

SocratesWhat on earth could zēmiōdes be? Look, Hermogenes, how right I was when I said that people change the meanings of names drastically by adding and removing letters. A very small twist is sometimes enough to 418b make a name mean the opposite. Take deon (“what is needful”), for example. It came to my mind just now, and this word reminded me of what I was about to tell you. This fine new pronunciation of ours has turned both deon and zēmiōdes around to indicate the opposite, obscuring what they mean. The old pronunciation, by contrast, shows what each name intends.

HermogenesWhat do you mean?

SocratesI’ll tell you. You know that our ancestors made a great deal of use of iota and delta, and not least 418c the women, who more than anyone preserve the old way of speaking. Nowadays, though, people turn iota into epsilon or eta, and delta into zeta, on the grounds that these sound grander.

HermogenesHow so?

SocratesFor example, the very earliest people called day himera, later ones hemera, and people now say hēmera.

HermogenesThat’s so.

SocratesThen do you know that of these names only the old one reveals the thought of the person who gave it? Light came out of the darkness to 418d human beings who welcomed it and longed (himeirousin) for it, and so they named it himera.

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesBut now that it’s been dressed up in tragic grandeur, you couldn’t even work out what hēmera means. Some people actually think day got this name because it makes things gentle (hēmera).

HermogenesI think so too.

SocratesAnd you know that the ancients called a yoke (zygon) a duogon.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesZygon shows nothing. Duogon, though, was rightly named for binding two (duo) 418e together for hauling. Now it’s zygon. A great many other words are like this.

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesIn the same way, then, first of all deon, pronounced as it is now, means the opposite of all the names connected with the good. Though it is a kind of good, deon appears to be a bond (desmos) and a hindrance to motion, a sort of brother of blaberon.

HermogenesIt certainly does look that way, Socrates.

SocratesBut not if you use the old name, which is much 419a more likely to have been given correctly than the present one. If you put back iota in place of epsilon, as people did long ago, it will agree with the earlier names for good things. Then it signifies the good as diïon (“going through”), not as deon, and going through is precisely what he praises. That way the one who gave the names doesn’t contradict himself. Deon, ōphelimon, lysiteloun, kerdaleon (“gainful”), agathon (“good”), sympheron (“advantageous”), and euporon (“resourceful”) all turn out to be the same thing under different names. Each signifies what orders and goes, which is praised everywhere, 419b while what holds back and binds is found fault with. And zēmiōdes, too: if you restore delta in place of zeta, as in the old pronunciation, you’ll see that the name was given to what binds (dounti) what goes (ion), and was named dēmiōdes.

HermogenesAnd what about hēdonē (“pleasure”), lypē (“pain”), epithymia (“desire”), and the like, Socrates?

SocratesThey don’t seem very hard to me, Hermogenes. Hēdonē seems to get its name from being the activity that tends toward benefit (onēsis). The delta has been inserted, so that it’s called hēdonē 419c instead of hēonē. Lypē seems to have been named from the dissolution (dialysis) the body suffers in this condition. Ania (“distress”) is what hinders going (ienai). Algēdōn (“suffering”) looks to me like a foreign word, named from algeinos (“painful”). Odynē (“anguish”) seems to be named from pain’s putting itself on (endysis). As for achthēdōn (“vexation”), it’s plain to anyone that the name is a likeness of the heaviness of motion. Chara (“joy”) seems to be named for the spreading out (diachysis) and easy passage of the soul’s flow.

HermogenesHow do doxa (“opinion”) and words like that look to you?

SocratesDoxa has been named either for the pursuit (diōxis) the soul engages in as it makes its way in pursuit of knowing how things are, or for the shot from a bow (toxon). The latter seems more likely. 420c Oiēsis (“belief”), at any rate, chimes with it. It seems to indicate the soul’s motion (oisis) toward every thing, toward what each of the things that are is like. In the same way boulē (“counsel”) somehow indicates a shot (bolē), and boulesthai (“to want”) and bouleuesthai (“to deliberate”) mean aiming at something. All these words, following doxa, appear to be likenesses of a shot. And conversely, aboulia (“ill-advisedness”) seems to be a failure to hit, as when someone has not shot at or hit what he was aiming at, what he wanted, what he was deliberating about, what he was striving for.

HermogenesYou seem to me to be piling these on thicker and faster now, Socrates.

SocratesThat’s because I’m already racing for the finish. But I still want to get through anankē (“necessity”), since it comes next, and hekousion (“voluntary”). Hekousion would signify what yields (eikon) and doesn’t resist, what yields, as I say, to what is going. That is what happens in accordance with one’s will. Anankaion (“necessary”), on the other hand, is what resists and runs contrary to one’s will, and so it would have to do with error and ignorance. It is likened to a journey through 420e ravines (ankē), because they are hard to get through, rough, and overgrown, and hold one back from going. That may be why it was called anankaion, likened to a journey through a ravine. But while my strength lasts, let’s not slacken it. And don’t you slacken either: keep asking.

HermogenesThen I’m asking about the greatest and finest of them: alētheia (“truth”), pseudos (“falsehood”), on (“what is”), and the very thing our discussion is now about, onoma (“name”). Why does each have the name it has?

SocratesIs there something you call maiesthai?

HermogenesYes, I do: searching.

SocratesThen onoma seems to be a name hammered together from a phrase that says: “this is a being (on) that happens to be the object of a search.” You’d see it more clearly in the word onomaston (“nameable”). There it plainly says that this is a being of which there is a search (on hou masma estin). 421b Alētheia also seems to have been hammered together like the others. The divine motion of what is seems to be addressed by this word, alētheia, as a divine wandering (theia alē). Pseudos is the opposite of motion. Once again, what is held back and forced to be at rest comes in for abuse, and it is likened to people sleeping (katheudousi). But the added psi hides what the name means. On and ousia (“being”) agree with alēthes (“true”) once they lose the iota, since they mean ion (“going”). 421c And ouk on (“what is not”), in turn, means ouk ion (“not going”), and in fact some people call it that.

HermogenesYou seem to me to have hammered these out very bravely, Socrates. But suppose someone asked you about this ion and rheon (“flowing”) and doun (“binding”), and what correctness these names have—

Socrates“What would we answer him?” Is that what you mean?

HermogenesExactly.

SocratesWell, we came up with one way just now to seem to be saying something when we answer.

HermogenesWhat was that?

SocratesTo say that whatever we don’t understand is something foreign. 421d Perhaps some of them really are like that. But it could also be that the primary names can’t be discovered because they are so old. Names get twisted in every direction, so it would be no wonder if the old language were no different from a foreign one compared with ours today.

HermogenesThere’s certainly nothing unreasonable in what you say.

SocratesYes, what I’m saying is plausible. But I don’t think this contest allows excuses. We must be eager to examine these names thoroughly. Let’s consider this. Suppose someone keeps asking about the words through which the 421e name is expressed, and then asks about the words through which those words are expressed, and never stops doing this. Won’t the person answering have to give up in the end?

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesThen at what point would the one who gives up be right to stop? Wouldn’t it be when he reaches the names that are like elements of the other phrases and names? Those, presumably, if this is how things stand, should no longer be shown to be composed of other names. For example, we said just now that agathon is composed of agaston (“admirable”) and thoon (“swift”). Perhaps we’d say that thoon comes from other words, and those from still others. 422b But if we ever reach a name that is no longer composed of any other names, we’d be right to say we have now reached an element, and that we must no longer trace it back to other names.

HermogenesI think you’re right.

SocratesSo are the names you’re asking about now in fact elements? And must we now examine their correctness, what it is, in some other way?

HermogenesThat’s likely.

SocratesLikely indeed, Hermogenes. At any rate, all the 422c earlier names appear to have led back to these. If that’s so, as I think it is, come here and look into it with me again, in case I talk nonsense when I say what the correctness of the primary names must be like.

HermogenesJust go ahead. I’ll look into it with you as far as I’m able.

SocratesWell then, there is one single correctness for every name, first and last alike, and none of them differs from the others in being a name. I think you agree with that too.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesNow, the correctness of the names we went through just now was meant to be of this kind: to show what each of the things that are is like.

HermogenesOf course.

SocratesThen the primary names must have this no less than the later ones, if they are going to be names.

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesBut the later ones, it seems, were able to accomplish this by means of the earlier ones.

HermogenesApparently.

SocratesVery well. But the primary names, which have no others underlying them yet: how will they make the things that are as clear as possible to us, 422e if they are going to be names? Answer me this. If we had no voice and no tongue, but wanted to show things to one another, wouldn’t we try to signify them with our hands and head and the rest of the body, the way people who cannot speak do now?

HermogenesHow else could we, Socrates?

SocratesIf we wanted to show what is above and light, I imagine we’d raise our hand toward the sky, imitating the very nature of the thing. If we wanted to show what is below and heavy, we’d point toward the ground. And if we wanted to show a horse galloping, or some other animal, you know we’d make our own bodies and postures as much like theirs as possible.

HermogenesIt seems to me it must be as you say.

SocratesThat way, I think, the body would show something, 423b by imitating, it seems, whatever it wanted to show.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd since we want to show things with voice and tongue and mouth, won’t what comes from these show us each thing when an imitation of anything at all is made through them?

HermogenesIt must, I think.

SocratesA name, then, it seems, is a vocal imitation of what it imitates, and the person who imitates something with his voice names whatever he imitates.

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesBy Zeus, I don’t think that’s well put yet, my friend.

HermogenesWhy not?

SocratesWe’d be forced to agree that these people who imitate sheep and roosters and other animals are naming the creatures they imitate.

HermogenesThat’s true.

SocratesSo do you think that’s right?

HermogenesNot I. But then what sort of imitation would a name be, Socrates?

SocratesFirst of all, it seems to me, we won’t be naming if we imitate things the way we imitate them in 423d music, even though there too we imitate with our voices. Second, we won’t be naming if we imitate the same things music imitates. What I mean is this: does each thing have a sound and a shape, and many of them a color too?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesThen it seems the art of naming isn’t a matter of imitating these, and it isn’t concerned with these imitations. Those arts are music in the one case and painting in the other. Isn’t that so?

HermogenesYes.

SocratesAnd what about this? Don’t you think each thing also has a being (ousia), just as it has a color and the other things we were just mentioning? To begin with, don’t color itself and sound each have a being? And so do all the other things that are thought to deserve the description “being.”

HermogenesI think so.

SocratesWell then, suppose someone could imitate exactly this about each thing, its being, with letters and syllables. Wouldn’t he show what each thing is? Or not?

HermogenesCertainly he would.

SocratesAnd what would you call the person who can do this? You called the earlier ones a musician and a painter. What would you call this one?

HermogenesThis one, Socrates, seems to me to be what we’ve been looking for all along: the expert in naming.

SocratesIf that’s true, then it seems we must now examine the names you were asking about, rhoē (“flow”), ienai (“to go”), and schesis (“holding back”). Do they, by means of their letters and syllables, grasp 424b what is, so as to imitate its being, or not?

HermogenesCertainly.

SocratesCome on, then, let’s see whether these are the only primary names, or whether there are many others too.

HermogenesI think there are others too.

SocratesThat’s likely. But what would be the method of division from which the imitator begins his imitating? The imitation of being happens to be made of syllables and letters. So isn’t it most correct to divide up the letters first? That is what 424c people who take up the study of rhythms do: they first distinguish the powers of the letters, then those of the syllables, and only then come to examine rhythms, not before.

HermogenesYes.

SocratesSo mustn’t we, too, first divide off the vowels? Then, among the rest, we must divide by kinds those that have neither voice nor sound (that, I believe, is what the experts in these matters call them), and also those that aren’t vowels but aren’t soundless either. And among the vowels themselves, mustn’t we divide all the kinds that differ from one another?note

HermogenesQuite possibly, by Zeus, Socrates.

SocratesWell then? Do you trust yourself to be able to divide these things up like that? I certainly don’t.

HermogenesThen I’m very far from it myself.

SocratesSo shall we give it up? Or would you like us to try as best we can, even if we can only make out a little of it? 425c We’d say first, as we did a little while ago with the gods, that we know nothing of the truth and are only guessing at what human beings believe about them. So now, too, let’s tell ourselves before we go on: if anyone, whether someone else or we ourselves, were ever to divide these things up properly, this is how they would have to be divided; but as things stand we’ll have to deal with them, as the saying goes, as best we can. Does that seem right, or what do you say?

HermogenesIt certainly does, very much so.

SocratesI expect it will look ridiculous, Hermogenes, for things to become clear by being imitated in letters and syllables. But there’s no way around it. We have nothing better than this to fall back on for the truth of the primary names—unless, of course, you’d like us to do what the tragic poets do when they’re stuck. They take refuge in the stage machinery and hoist up gods. We could do the same, say that the gods laid down the primary names and that’s why they’re correct, and be done with it. Is 425e that the best account for us too? Or the other one, that we got them from some non-Greeks, and non-Greeks are older than we are? Or that their antiquity makes it impossible to 426a examine them, just as with foreign words? All of these would be evasions—and very clever ones—for someone unwilling to give an account of how the primary names are correctly laid down.note

HermogenesNot in the least, Socrates.

SocratesWell, what I’ve perceived about the primary names strikes me as quite outrageous and ridiculous. I’ll share it with you, if you like. And if you can get hold of something better anywhere, try to share it with me in turn.

HermogenesI will. Go ahead, speak boldly.

SocratesFirst of all, then, rho seems to me to be a kind of tool for all motion. We haven’t even said why motion has the name kinēsis. But clearly it means hesis (“going”), since in the old days we didn’t use eta but epsilon. Its root is kiein—a foreign word—which means ienai (“to go”). So if someone found its old name in the form that fits our language, it would correctly be called hesis. As it is, from the foreign kiein, together with the change to eta and the insertion of nu, it has been called kinēsis, though it ought 426d to have been called kieinēsis or eisin. And stasis (“rest”) means to be the negation of going, but has been named stasis for the sake of embellishment.

HermogenesWell, Socrates, Cratylus often gives me a great deal of trouble, as I said at the start. He claims there is such a thing as correctness of names, but never says anything clear about what it is, so I can’t tell whether he’s being so obscure about it every time on purpose or not. So now, 427e Cratylus, tell me in front of Socrates: are you happy with what Socrates says about names, or can you put it better some other way? And if you can, tell us, so that either you learn from Socrates or you teach the two of us.

CratylusWhat’s this, Hermogenes? Do you think it’s easy to learn or teach any subject so quickly—let alone one this big, which seems to be the greatest among the greatest?

HermogenesNo, by Zeus, I don’t. But I think Hesiod puts it well: even if you add only a little to a little, it’s worth doing. So if you can make even a little progress, don’t give up. Do a kindness to Socrates here—you owe him that much—and to me.note

SocratesFor my own part, Cratylus, I wouldn’t insist on anything I’ve said. I’ve just looked into things with Hermogenes as they seemed to me. So as far as I’m concerned, speak boldly if you 428b have something better, because I’ll welcome it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can say something finer than this; you seem to me both to have looked into such questions yourself and to have learned from others. So if you do have something finer to say, sign me up too as one of your students in the correctness of names.

CratylusWell, Socrates, as you say, I have given these matters some thought, and perhaps I could make you 428c my student. But I’m afraid it’s quite the opposite. Somehow I feel like saying to you what Achilles says to Ajax in the Prayers. He says: “Ajax, son of Telamon, sprung from Zeus, leader of the people, everything you’ve said seems spoken after my own heart.” That’s how you seem to me, Socrates: your oracles are pretty much to my mind, whether you’ve been inspired by Euthyphro or some other Muse has been living in you for a long time without your noticing.note

SocratesMy good Cratylus, I’ve been amazed at my own wisdom myself for some time now, and I don’t trust it. So I think I need to go back over what I’m saying. Being deceived by yourself is the hardest thing of all: when the deceiver never stands even a little way off but is always right there with you, isn’t that terrible? So it seems we must keep turning back to what we said before, and try, in that poet’s words, to look “both before and behind.” Let’s do that now and see what we’ve said. 428e The correctness of a name, we say, is this: that it shows what the thing is like. Shall we say that’s been adequately stated?

CratylusIt seems so to me, absolutely, Socrates.

SocratesSo names are spoken for the sake of instruction?

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesThen shall we say that this too is an art, and that it has its craftsmen?

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesWho are they?

CratylusThe ones you mentioned at the beginning: the lawgivers.

SocratesNow, shall we say this art, too, arises among human beings like the others, or not? Here’s what I mean. Some painters, I suppose, are worse and others better?

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesAnd the better ones produce finer works—their pictures—and the others poorer ones? And builders likewise: some build finer houses, others uglier ones?

CratylusYes.

SocratesThen do lawgivers, too, produce works that are finer in some cases and uglier in others?

CratylusThere I no longer agree.

SocratesSo you don’t think some laws are better and others worse?

CratylusNo, I don’t.

SocratesNor, it seems, do you think one name is laid down worse and another better?

CratylusNo, I don’t.

SocratesSo all names are laid down correctly?

CratylusYes, all that really are names.

SocratesWell then, what about the point raised a moment ago? In the case of Hermogenes here, shall we say 429c that this name isn’t laid down for him at all, unless he has some connection with the birth of Hermes? Or that it is laid down, but not correctly?

CratylusI don’t think it’s even laid down for him, Socrates; it only seems to be. This name belongs to someone else—the one whose nature the name makes clear.

SocratesThen isn’t someone even lying when he says this man is Hermogenes? Or might it not even be possible to say that this man is Hermogenes, if he isn’t?

CratylusWhat do you mean?

SocratesIs it that it’s altogether impossible to say false things—is that what your argument amounts to? Plenty of people say so, my dear Cratylus, both now and in the past.

CratylusWell, how could anyone, Socrates, say what he’s saying and not be saying what is? Isn’t that what saying false things is—saying what isn’t?

SocratesThat argument is too clever for me, my friend, at my age. All the same, tell me just this much: 429e do you think it’s impossible to speak falsely, but possible to assert something false?

CratylusI don’t think it’s possible to assert it either.

SocratesNor to say it, nor to address someone falsely? Suppose, for example, someone met you abroad, took your hand and said, “Greetings, my Athenian visitor, Hermogenes son of Smicrion.” Would he be speaking these words, or asserting them, or saying them, or addressing them in this way not to you but to Hermogenes here? Or to no one?

CratylusI think, Socrates, that this man would be uttering these words for nothing.

SocratesWell, I’ll gladly take even that. Would the one who uttered them be uttering something true or something false? Or would part of it be true and part false? That too would be enough for me.

CratylusI’d say a man like that was just making noise, moving himself to no purpose, as if someone were to strike a bronze pot and set it vibrating.

SocratesCome now, Cratylus, let’s see if we can somehow come to terms. Wouldn’t you say that the name is one thing and the thing it’s the name of is another?

CratylusI would.

SocratesAnd you agree that the name is a kind of imitation of the 430b thing?

CratylusAbsolutely.

SocratesAnd you say that paintings, too, are imitations of certain things, but in a different way?

CratylusYes.

SocratesCome then—maybe I don’t understand what on earth you’re saying, and you may well be right—can both these kinds of imitation, the paintings and those names, be assigned and applied to the things they’re imitations of, or not?

CratylusThey can.

SocratesFirst, then, consider this. Could someone assign the picture of the man to the man and that of the woman to the woman, and so on?

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesAnd the reverse as well—the man’s picture to the woman and the woman’s to the man?

CratylusThat’s possible too.

SocratesNow, are both these assignments correct, or only one of them?

CratylusOnly one.

SocratesThe one, I take it, that gives each thing what belongs to it and resembles it.

CratylusI think so.

SocratesThen, so that you and I don’t come to blows in our discussion when we’re friends, accept what I’m saying. This kind of assignment, my friend, I call correct in the case of both kinds of imitation, pictures and names alike; and in the case of names, true as well as correct. The other kind, the giving and applying of what’s unlike, I call not correct—and false, when it involves names.

CratylusBut be careful, Socrates: it may be that with paintings 430e this is possible—assigning them incorrectly—but not with names, which must always be assigned correctly.

SocratesWhat do you mean? How is one different from the other? Can’t someone go up to a man and say, “This is your portrait,” and show him what may happen to be his likeness, or may happen to be a woman’s? By “show” I mean bring it before the perception of his eyes.

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesWell then? Can’t he go up to this same man again and say, “This is your name”? A name, after all, is an imitation, just as a painting is. Here’s my point: wouldn’t it be possible to 431a say to him, “This is your name,” and then bring before the perception of his hearing what may happen to be his imitation, saying “man,” or may happen to be the imitation of the female of the human race, saying “woman”? Don’t you think this is possible and sometimes happens?

CratylusI’m willing to grant you that, Socrates. Let it be so.

SocratesThat’s good of you, my friend—if it really is so, since there’s no need to fight it out over this now. Anyway, if 431b there’s such an assignment here too, we want to call one of these speaking truly and the other speaking falsely. And if that’s so, and it’s possible to assign names incorrectly—not giving each thing what fits it, but sometimes what doesn’t—then it would be possible to do the same thing with verbs. And if verbs and names can be laid down this way, so can sentences: 431c for sentences, I take it, are a combination of these. Or what do you say, Cratylus?

CratylusThat’s right; I think you put it well.

SocratesThen if we compare the primary names, in turn, to pictures, it’s possible, as with paintings, to give them all the fitting colors and shapes—or not all of them, but to leave some out and add others, putting in too many or too large. Or isn’t it possible?

CratylusIt is.

SocratesAnd the one who gives them all produces fine pictures and images, while the one who adds or takes away also produces pictures and images, but bad ones?

CratylusYes.

SocratesAnd what about the one who imitates the being of things through syllables and letters? By the same reasoning, if he gives them everything that fits, won’t the image be fine—and that’s a name—while if he sometimes leaves out or adds small things, an image will still come about, but not a fine one? So some names will be well made and others badly?

CratylusPerhaps.

SocratesSo perhaps one craftsman of names will be good and another bad?

CratylusYes.

SocratesAnd this craftsman’s name, we said, was “lawgiver.”

CratylusYes.

SocratesSo perhaps, by Zeus, just as in the other arts, one lawgiver will be good and another bad—provided we agree on those earlier points.

CratylusThat’s so. But you see, Socrates, when we assign these letters—alpha and beta and each of the others—to names by the art of grammar, 432a if we take anything away, or add or transpose anything, it isn’t that we’ve written the name, only incorrectly. We haven’t written it at all: it immediately becomes a different name if any of that happens to it.

SocratesI’m afraid we’re not examining it well if we examine it that way, Cratylus.

CratylusHow so?

SocratesWhat you describe might well happen to things that must either be or not be from a certain number—like ten itself or any other number you like: if you take something away or 432b add something, it immediately becomes a different number. But this may not be the correctness of a quality, or of an image in general. On the contrary, an image mustn’t reproduce every feature of what it represents at all, if it’s to be an image. See whether I’m making sense.

CratylusTwo Cratyluses, it seems to me, Socrates.

SocratesSo you see, my friend, that we must look for a different kind of correctness for an image and for the things we were just talking about, and not insist that if anything 432d is missing or added it’s no longer an image? Or don’t you perceive how far images fall short of having the same features as the things they’re images of?

CratylusI do.

SocratesAt any rate, Cratylus, the things that names are names of would be ridiculously treated by their names if they were made like them in every way. Everything would be doubled, I suppose, and no one could say of either which was the thing itself and which the name.

CratylusThat’s true.

SocratesTake heart, then, my noble friend, and allow that one name may be well 432e laid down and another not. Don’t insist that it have all the letters, so that it’s exactly like what it’s the name of; allow that an unfitting letter may be applied too. And if a letter, then a name in a sentence; and if a name, then a sentence in a speech may be applied that doesn’t fit the things, and the thing will be named and described no less, as long as the outline of the thing the speech is about is present in it—as in the 433a names of the letters, if you remember what Hermogenes and I were saying just now.

CratylusYes, I remember.

SocratesGood. When that is present, even if the name doesn’t have all the appropriate letters, the thing will still be spoken of: well when it has them all, badly when it has only a few. So let’s allow that it is spoken of, my dear friend. Otherwise we’ll pay the penalty, like the people in Aegina who are out on the road late at night, and seem for our part 433b to have truly arrived at things somehow later than we should. Or else look for some other correctness of names, and don’t agree that a name is a way of revealing a thing by syllables and letters. If you say both, you won’t be able to agree with yourself.note

CratylusWell, Socrates, I think what you say is reasonable, and I’ll accept it.

SocratesSince we agree on that, let’s look at the next point. If a name is going to be well set down, we say, must it have the appropriate letters?

CratylusYes.

SocratesAnd the appropriate ones are those that are like the things?

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesSo names that are well set down are set down that way. But if one wasn’t set down well, most of it might perhaps be made of appropriate, similar letters, if it’s going to be an image at all. Yet it would also contain something inappropriate, and because of that the name wouldn’t be fine or finely made. Is that what we say, or something else?

CratylusI don’t think there’s any need to fight it out, Socrates. Still, I’m not happy saying that something is a name and yet isn’t well set down.

SocratesIs this what you’re not happy with, that a name is a means of revealing the thing?

CratylusNo, I’m happy with that.

SocratesAnd you think it’s right to say that some names are composed of earlier ones, while others are primary?

CratylusI do.

SocratesBut if the primary ones are going to reveal anything, do you have any better way for them to become means of revealing 433e than to make them as much as possible like the things they’re supposed to reveal? Or do you prefer the way Hermogenes and many others describe? On that view names are agreed tokens, and they reveal things to those who made the agreement and already knew the things. Agreement is the correctness of a name, and it makes no difference whether we agree as things are agreed now, or the other way round, calling “big” what we now call “small,” and “small” what we now call “big.” Which way do you prefer?

CratylusRevealing whatever you reveal by a likeness, Socrates, is utterly different from doing it by any random thing.

SocratesWell said. Then if the name is going to be like the thing, the letters from which anyone will put together the primary names must be naturally like the things, mustn’t they? Here’s what I mean. Could anyone ever have put together the painting we were talking about a moment ago, a likeness of something real, if there didn’t exist by nature 434b pigments like the things painting imitates, from which painted images are composed? Or would that be impossible?

CratylusImpossible.

SocratesThen in the same way names could never become like anything, unless the things they’re composed of had some likeness from the start to the things the names imitate? And the things they must be composed of are letters?

CratylusYes.

SocratesSo now you too are a partner in the argument that just now 434c Hermogenes was a partner in. Come on: do you think we were right to say that rho resembles rushing, motion, and hardness, or not?

CratylusI think you were right.

SocratesAnd lambda resembles what’s smooth and soft and the other things we were just mentioning?

CratylusYes.

SocratesDo you know, then, that for the same thing we say sklērotēs (“hardness”), while the Eretrians say sklērotēr?note

CratylusCertainly.

SocratesThen do rho and sigma both resemble the same thing, so that the word reveals the same thing to them when it ends in rho as it does to us when it ends in sigma? Or does it fail to reveal it to one side or the other?

CratylusNo, it reveals it to both.

SocratesInsofar as rho and sigma are alike, or insofar as they aren’t?

CratylusInsofar as they’re alike.

SocratesThen are they alike in every respect?

CratylusWell, perhaps for revealing rushing.

SocratesAnd the lambda in the word? Doesn’t it reveal the opposite of hardness?

CratylusPerhaps it’s in there wrongly, Socrates. It would be like the cases you were going through with Hermogenes a moment ago, taking letters out and putting them in where needed, and I thought you were right. Perhaps here too we ought to say rho instead of lambda.

SocratesGood point. What then? As we speak now, do we understand nothing of each other when someone says sklēron (“hard”)? Don’t you know right now what I mean?

CratylusI do, my dear friend, through habit at any rate.

SocratesAnd when you say “habit,” do you think you mean anything different from agreement? Or do you mean by habit anything other than this: when I utter this word, I have that thing in mind, and you recognize that I have that thing in mind? Isn’t that what you mean?

CratylusYes.

SocratesThen if you recognize it when I utter it, something is revealed to you by me?

CratylusYes.

SocratesAnd it’s revealed by something unlike what I have in mind when I utter it, if lambda is unlike the hardness you speak of. But if that’s so, what else have you done but make an agreement with yourself? Correctness of names becomes agreement for you, since both like and unlike letters reveal things once habit and agreement attach to them. And even if habit is as far as you like from 435b agreement, it still wouldn’t be right to say that likeness is what reveals. Habit is, since habit, it seems, reveals by means of both the like and the unlike.

CratylusTo teach, I think, Socrates. And this is quite simple: whoever knows the names knows the things too.

SocratesPerhaps, Cratylus, you mean something like this: when someone knows what a name is like (and it’s like the thing), 435e then he’ll know the thing too, since the thing happens to be like the name, and there’s one and the same art for all things that are like one another. I take it that’s why you say whoever knows the names will know the things too.

CratylusExactly right.

SocratesHold on, then. Let’s see what this way of teaching about the things that are, the one you’re describing now, might be. Is there another way as well, with this one the better of the two, or is there no other way but this? Which do you think?

CratylusThe latter. There’s no other way at all. This one is both the only way and the best.

SocratesAnd is discovering the things that are the same thing too, so that whoever has discovered the names has also discovered the things they’re names of? Or must one search and discover by a different way, and learn by this one?

CratylusAbsolutely. Searching and discovering work in exactly the same way.

SocratesCome then, Cratylus, let’s think it over. If someone searching for 436b things follows the names, looking into what each one means to be, do you realize there’s no small danger of being deceived?

CratylusHow so?

SocratesClearly whoever first set down the names set them down to match what he took the things to be, as we say. Isn’t that so?

CratylusYes.

SocratesSo if his thinking wasn’t correct, and he set them down to match what he thought, what do you think will happen to us who follow him? Anything but being deceived?

CratylusBut surely that’s not how it is, Socrates. It must 436c be that the one who set down the names did so knowing. Otherwise, as I said long ago, they wouldn’t even be names. And here’s the strongest evidence for you that the name-maker didn’t miss the truth: otherwise his names would never have been so consistent. Or didn’t you notice yourself, as you were talking, that all the names came about on the same principle and pointed the same way?

SocratesBut that’s no defense at all, my good Cratylus. Suppose the name-maker slipped at the start, then forced the rest 436d into line with that first step and made them agree with it. That’s nothing strange. It’s like geometrical diagrams: sometimes a small, unnoticed error is made at the start, and all the many steps that follow agree with one another. So with every matter, every man must give most of his discussion and most of his scrutiny to the starting point, to see whether it’s correctly laid down or not. Once that has been examined adequately, the rest should be seen to follow from it. All the same, 436e I’d be surprised if the names do agree with one another. Let’s look again at what we went through before. We say the names signify being to us on the assumption that everything is moving, rushing, and flowing. Isn’t that how you think they reveal it?

CratylusVery much so, and they signify it correctly.

SocratesThen let’s pick out some of them and look. First take this name, epistēmē (“knowledge”), and see how ambiguous it is. It seems rather to signify that it brings our soul to a stand (histēsin) at things than that it’s carried around along with them. And it’s more correct to pronounce its beginning as we do now, rather than inserting the epsilon as hepeïstēmē; the insertion should be made with iota instead of epsilon. Next, bebaion (“firm”): it’s an imitation of a standing base (basis) and of rest, not of movement. 437b Then historia (“inquiry”), I suppose, signifies just that it stops (histēsi) the flow. And piston (“trustworthy”) plainly signifies stopping (histan). And then mnēmē (“memory”) surely indicates to anyone that it’s a staying (monē) in the soul, not a movement.

CratylusBut Socrates, you can see that most of them signified it the other way.

SocratesWhat of it, Cratylus? Are we going to count names like voting pebbles, and is that where correctness will lie? Will whatever the greater number of names appear to signify be the truth?

CratylusThat’s not likely, no.

SocratesNot in the least, my friend. Let’s leave this where it is 438a and go back to the point where we turned aside. A little while ago, if you remember, you said that the one who set down the names must have known the things he set them down for. Do you still think so, or not?

CratylusStill.

SocratesAnd do you say that the one who set down the primary ones also knew when he set them down?

CratylusHe knew.

SocratesThen from what sort of names had he learned or discovered 438b the things, if the primary ones hadn’t yet been set down? And we say it’s impossible to learn and discover things except by learning the names or by finding out for ourselves what they’re like.

CratylusI think you have a point, Socrates.

SocratesThen how shall we say they set down names knowingly, or were lawgivers, before any name at all had been set down for them to know, if it’s impossible to learn things except from names?

CratylusI think the truest account of this, Socrates, is that some power greater than human set down the primary names for things, so that they must be correct.

SocratesSo do you think the one who set them down, being some divinity or god, would have set down names that contradicted each other? Or do you think there was nothing in what we were saying just now?

CratylusBut maybe one of the two groups weren’t names at all.

SocratesWhich group, my excellent friend? The ones that point toward rest, or the ones that point toward movement? Surely, given what we just said, it won’t be decided by numbers.

CratylusNo, that wouldn’t be fair, Socrates.

SocratesSo when names are in civil war, some claiming that they’re the ones like the truth and others claiming that they are, what will we use to decide, or where will we turn? Surely not to yet other names besides these, since there aren’t any. No, clearly we must look for something other than names, something that will show us without names which of these are the true ones, clearly by showing the truth of the things that are.

CratylusI think so.

SocratesThen it is possible, it seems, Cratylus, to learn the things that are without names, if this is right.

CratylusApparently.

SocratesThen through what else would you still expect to learn them? Through anything other than what’s reasonable and most just: through one another, if they’re in any way akin, and through themselves? Something different from them and of another kind would signify something different and of another kind, not them.

CratylusI think you’re right.

SocratesHold on, by Zeus. Didn’t we agree many times that names that are well set down resemble the things they’re set down as names of, and are images of the things?

CratylusYes.

SocratesSo suppose it’s entirely possible to learn things through names, and also possible to learn them through the things themselves. Which would be the finer and clearer way to learn? Learning from the image both the image itself, whether it’s a good likeness, and the truth it was an image of, 439b or learning from the truth both the truth itself and its image, whether it was fittingly made?

CratylusIt must be from the truth, I think.

SocratesWell, how one ought to learn or discover the things that are is perhaps too great a question for you and me to have settled. But we should be content to agree on this much: they must be learned and searched for not from names but, much rather, from themselves.

CratylusApparently, Socrates.

CratylusI think there is, Socrates.

SocratesThen let’s look at that thing itself. The question isn’t whether some face or other such thing is beautiful, since all those things seem to flow. Rather, shall we say that beauty itself is always such as it is?

CratylusNecessarily.

SocratesThen can we correctly call it anything if it’s always slipping away, saying first that it is that, then that it’s of such a kind? Or must it, even as we speak, at once become something else, slip away, and no longer be so?

CratylusNecessarily.

SocratesThen how could something that is never in the same state be anything? If it’s ever in the same state, then clearly it isn’t changing at all during that time. And if it’s always in the same state and is the same, how could it change or move, when it never departs from its own form?

CratylusIt couldn’t, in any way.

SocratesNor, for that matter, could it be known by anyone. Just as 440a the one who was going to know it approached, it would become something else, of another kind, so that it could no longer be known what sort of thing it is or what state it’s in. And surely no knowledge knows what it knows if that thing is in no state at all.

CratylusIt is as you say.

SocratesNor is it reasonable to say that there’s knowledge at all, Cratylus, if all things are changing and nothing stays. If this very thing, knowledge, doesn’t change from being knowledge, then knowledge would always stay and would be knowledge. But if the very form 440b of knowledge changes, then at that same moment it would change into another form, other than knowledge, and there would be no knowledge. And if it’s always changing, there would always be no knowledge, and on this argument there would be nothing to do the knowing and nothing to be known. But if there is always that which knows, and there is that which is known, and there is the beautiful, and there is the good, and there is each one of the things that are, then I don’t think these things we’re now talking about are at all like flow 440c or movement.

CratylusI’ll do that. But you can be sure, Socrates, that even now I haven’t failed to consider it. As I consider it and 440e take trouble over it, it seems to me much more that things are the way Heraclitus says.

SocratesThen you’ll teach me another time, my friend, when you’re back. For now, go off to the country as you’ve been getting ready to do. Hermogenes here will see you on your way.

CratylusI will, Socrates. But you too should keep trying to think these things over from now on.