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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: sophistical tenet, and listens with a sort of half admiration, half belief,
to the speculations of Socrates.
Cratylus is of opinion that a name is either a true name or not a name at
all. He is unable to conceive of degrees of imitation; a word is either
the perfect expression of a thing, or a mere inarticulate sound (a fallacy
which is still prevalent among theorizers about the origin of language).
He is at once a philosopher and a sophist; for while wanting to rest
language on an immutable basis, he would deny the possibility of falsehood.
He is inclined to derive all truth from language, and in language he sees
reflected the philosophy of Heracleitus. His views are not like those of
Hermogenes, hastily taken up, but are said to be the result of mature
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