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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: vanishing away from us while the words are yet in our mouths? And they
could not be known by any one if they are always passing away--for if they
are always passing away, the observer has no opportunity of observing their
state. Whether the doctrine of the flux or of the eternal nature be the
truer, is hard to determine. But no man of sense will put himself, or the
education of his mind, in the power of names: he will not condemn himself
to be an unreal thing, nor will he believe that everything is in a flux
like the water in a leaky vessel, or that the world is a man who has a
running at the nose. This doctrine may be true, Cratylus, but is also very
likely to be untrue; and therefore I would have you reflect while you are
young, and find out the truth, and when you know come and tell me. 'I have
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