Page - 425 - in The Complete Plato

SOCRATES: Now then, as I am desirous that we being friends should have a good understanding about the argument, let me state my view to you: the first mode of assignment, whether applied to figures or to names, I call right, and when applied to names only, true as well as right; and the other mode of giving and assigning the name which is unlike, I call wrong, and in the case of names, false as well as wrong. CRATYLUS: That may be true, Socrates, in the case of pictures; they may be wrongly assigned; but not in the case of names—they must be always right. SOCRATES: Why, what is the difference? May I not go to a man and say to him, ‘This is your picture,’ showing him his own likeness, or perhaps the likeness of a woman; and when I say ‘show,’ I mean bring before the sense of sight. CRATYLUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And may I not go to him again, and say, ‘This is your name’? — for the name, like the picture, is an imitation. May I not say to him— ‘This is your name’? and may I not then bring to his sense of hearing the imitation of himself, when I say, ‘This is a man’; or of a female of the human species, when I say, ‘This is a woman,’ as the case may be? Is not all that quite possible? CRATYLUS: I would fain agree with you, Socrates; and therefore I say, Granted. SOCRATES: That is very good of you, if I am right, which need hardly be disputed at present. But if I can assign names as well as pictures to objects, the right assignment of them we may call truth, and the wrong assignment of them falsehood. Now if there be such a wrong assignment of names, there may also be a wrong or inappropriate assignment of verbs; and if of names and verbs then of the sentences, which are made up of them. What do you say, Cratylus? CRATYLUS: I agree; and think that what you say is very true. SOCRATES: And further, primitive nouns may be compared to pictures, and in pictures you may either give all the appropriate colours and figures, or you may not give them all—some may be wanting; or there may be too many or too much of them—may there not? CRATYLUS: Very true. SOCRATES: And he who gives all gives a perfect picture or figure; and he who takes away or adds also gives a picture or figure, but not a good one. 425