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İngilizce Yunanca

433 Socrates. That is, then, the method by which wellgiven names are given. But if any name is not well given, the greater part of it may perhaps, if it is to be an image at all, be made up of proper and like letters, but it may contain some inappropriate element, and is on that account not good or well made. Is that our view?

433 Cratylus. I suppose, Socrates, there is no use in keeping up my contention; but I am not satisfied that it can be a name and not be well given.

433 Socrates. Are you not satisfied that the name is the representation of a thing?

433 Cratylus. Yes.

433 Socrates. And do you not think it is true that some names are composed of earlier ones and others are primary?

433 Cratylus. Yes.

433 Socrates. But if the primary names are to be representations of any things, can you suggest any better way of making them representations than by making them as much as possible like the things which they are to represent? Or do you prefer the theory advanced by Hermogenes and many others, who claim that names are conventional and represent things to those who established the convention and knew the things beforehand, and that convention is the sole principle of correctness in names, and it makes no difference whether we accept the existing convention or adopt an opposite one according to which small would be called great and great small? Which of these two theories do you prefer?

434 Cratylus. Representing by likeness the thing represented is absolutely and entirely superior to representation by chance signs.

434 Socrates. You are right. Then if the name is like the thing, the letters of which the primary names are to be formed must be by their very nature like the things, must they not? Let me explain. Could a painting, to revert to our previous comparison, ever be made like any real thing, if there were no pigments out of which the painting is composed, which were by their nature like the objects which the painter’s art imitates? Is not that impossible?

434 Cratylus. Yes, it is impossible.

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Şifre Yenileme