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[431a] Very well; can I not say to him, “This is your name,” and then bring before his sense of hearing perhaps the imitation of himself, saying that it is a man, or perhaps the imitation of the female of the human species, saying that it is a woman? Do you not believe that this is possible and sometimes happens?

Cratylus
I am willing to concede it, Socrates, and grant that you are right.

Socrates
That is a good thing for you to do, my friend, if I am right; for now we need no longer argue about the matter.


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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