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Socrates. And the man who knows how to ask and answer questions you call a dialectician?
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Hermogenes. Yes, that is what I call him.
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Socrates. The work of the carpenter, then, is to make a rudder under the supervision of the steersman, if he rudder is to be a good one.
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Hermogenes. Evidently.
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Socrates. And the work of the lawgiver, as it seems, is to make a name, with the dialectician as his supervisor, if names are to be well given.
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Hermogenes. True.
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Socrates. Then, Hermogenes, the giving of names can hardly be, as you imagine, a trifling matter, or a task for trifling or casual persons: and Cratylus is right in saying that names belong to things by nature and that not every one is an artisan of names, but only he who keeps in view the name which belongs by nature to each particular thing and is able to embody its form in the letters and syllables.
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Hermogenes. I do not know how to answer you, Socrates; nevertheless it is not easy to change my conviction suddenly. I think you would be more likely to convince me, if you were to show me just what it is that you say is the natural correctness of names.
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Socrates. I, my dear Hermogenes, do not say that there is any. You forget what I said a while ago, that I did not know, but would join you in looking for the truth. And now, as we are looking, you and I, we already see one thing we did not know before, that names do possess a certain natural correctness, and that not every man knows how to give a name well to anything whatsoever. Is not that true?
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Hermogenes. Certainly.
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Socrates. Then our next task is to try to find out, if you care to know about it, what kind of correctness that is which belongs to names.
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Hermogenes. To be sure I care to know.
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Socrates. Then investigate.
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Hermogenes. How shall I investigate?