Plato, Cratylus, section 423c

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[423c]

Socrates
By Zeus, I do not think it is quite correct, yet, my friend.

Hermogenes
Why not?

Socrates
We should be obliged to agree that people who imitate sheep and cocks and other animals were naming those which they imitate.

Hermogenes
Yes, so we should.

Socrates
And do you think that is correct?

Hermogenes
No, I do not; but, Socrates, what sort of an imitation is a name?

Socrates
In the first place we shall not, in my opinion, be making names, if we imitate things as we do in music,

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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