words which you utter have a common character and
purpose?

SOCRATES: But that, friend Cratylus, is no answer. For if he did begin
in error, he may have forced the remainder into agreement with the
original error and with himself; there would be nothing strange in this,
any more than in geometrical diagrams, which have often a slight and
invisible flaw in the first part of the process, and are consistently
mistaken in the long deductions which follow. And this is the reason
why every man should expend his chief thought and attention on the
consideration of his first principles:--are they or are they not rightly
laid down? and when he has duly sifted them, all the rest will follow.
Now I should be astonished to find that names are really consistent. And
here let us revert to our former discussion: Were we not saying that all
things are in motion and progress and flux, and that this idea of motion
is expressed by names? Do you not conceive that to be the meaning of
them?

CRATYLUS: Yes; that is assuredly their meaning, and the true meaning.

SOCRATES: Let us revert to episteme (knowledge) and observe how
ambiguous this word is, seeming rather to signify stopping the soul at
things than going round with them; and therefore we should leave
the beginning as at present, and not reject the epsilon, but make an
insertion of an iota instead of an epsilon (not pioteme, but epiisteme).
Take another example: bebaion (sure) is clearly the expression of
station and position, and not of motion. Again, the word istoria
(enquiry) bears upon the face of it the stopping (istanai) of the
stream; and the word piston (faithful) certainly indicates cessation of
motion; then, again, mneme (memory), as any one may see, expresses
rest in the soul, and not motion. Moreover, words such as amartia
and sumphora, which have a bad sense, viewed in the light of their
etymologies will be the same as sunesis and episteme and other
words which have a good sense (compare omartein, sunienai, epesthai,
sumpheresthai); and much the same may be said of amathia and akolasia,
for amathia may be explained as e ama theo iontos poreia, and akolasia
as e akolouthia tois pragmasin. Thus the names which in these instances
we find to have the worst sense, will turn out to be framed on the same
principle as those which have the best. And any one I believe who would
take the trouble might find many other examples in which the giver of
names indicates, not that things