Dialogues

one another, should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body? Hermogenes There would be no choice, Socrates. Socrates We should imitate the nature of the thing; the elevation of our hands to heaven would mean lightness and upwardness; heaviness and downwardness would be expressed by letting them drop to the ground; if we were describing the running of a horse, or any other animal, we should make our bodies and their gestures as like as we could to them. Hermogenes I do not see that we could do anything else. Socrates We could not; for by bodily imitation only can the body ever express anything. Hermogenes Very true. Socrates And when we want to express ourselves, either with the voice, or tongue, or mouth, the expression is simply their imitation of that which we want to express. Hermogenes It must be so, I think. Socrates Then a name is a vocal imitation of that which the vocal imitator names or imitates? Hermogenes I think so. Socrates Nay, my friend, I am disposed to think that we have not reached the truth as yet. Hermogenes Why not? Socrates Because if we have we shall be obliged to admit that the people who imitate sheep, or cocks, or other animals, name that which they imitate. Hermogenes Quite true. Socrates Then could I have been right in what I was saying? Hermogenes In my opinion, no. But I wish that you would tell me, Socrates, what sort of an imitation is a name? Socrates In the first place, I should reply, not a musical imitation, although that is also vocal; nor, again, an imitation of what music imitates; these, in my judgment, would not be naming. Let me put the matter as follows: All objects have sound and figure, and many have colour? Hermogenes Certainly. Socrates But the art of naming appears not to be concerned with imitations of this kind; the arts which have to do with them are music and drawing? Hermogenes True. Socrates Again, is there not an essence of each thing, just as there is a colour, or sound? And is there not an essence of colour and sound as well as of anything else which may be said to have an essence? Hermogenes I should think so. Socrates Well, and if anyone could express the essence of each thing in letters and syllables, would he not express the nature of each thing? Hermogenes Quite so. Socrates The musician and the painter were the two names which you gave to the two other imitators. What will this imitator be called? Hermogenes I imagine, Socrates, that he must be the namer, or name-giver, of whom we are in search. Socrates If this is true, then I think that we are in a condition to consider the names ῥοὴ (stream), ἰέναι (to go), σχέσις (retention), about which you were asking; and we may see whether the namer has grasped the nature of them in letters and syllables in such a manner as to imitate the essence or not. Hermogenes Very good. Socrates But are these the only primary names, or are there others? Hermogenes There must be others. Socrates So I should expect. But how shall we further analyse them, and where does the imitator begin? Imitation of the essence is made by syllables and letters; ought we not, therefore, first to separate the letters, just as those who are beginning rhythm first distinguish the powers of elementary, and then of compound sounds, and when they have done so, but not before, they proceed to the consideration of rhythms? Hermogenes Yes. Socrates Must we not begin in the same way with letters; first separating the vowels, and then the consonants and mutes,41 into classes, according to the received distinctions of the learned; also the semivowels, which are neither vowels, nor yet mutes; and distinguishing into classes the vowels themselves? And when we have perfected the classification of things, we shall give them names, and see whether, as in the case of letters, there are any classes to which they may be all referred;42 and hence we shall see their natures, and see, too, whether they have in them classes as there are in the letters; and when we have well considered all this, we shall know how to apply them to what they resemble⁠—whether one letter is used to denote one thing, or whether there is to be an admixture of several of them; just, as in painting, the painter who wants to depict anything sometimes uses purple only, or any other colour, and sometimes mixes up several colours, as his method is when he has to paint flesh colour or anything of that kind⁠—he uses his colours as his figures appear to require them; and so, too, we shall apply letters to the expression of objects, either single letters when required, or several letters; and so we shall form syllables, as they are called, and from syllables make nouns and verbs; and thus, at last, from the combinations of nouns and verbs arrive at language, large and fair and whole; and as the painter made a figure, even so shall we make speech by the art of the namer or the rhetorician, or by some other art. Not that I am literally speaking of ourselves, but I was carried away⁠—meaning to say that this was the way in which (not we but) the ancients formed language, and what they put together we must take to pieces in like manner, if we are to attain a scientific view of the whole subject, and we must see whether the primary, and also whether the secondary elements are rightly given or not, for if they are not, the composition of them, my dear Hermogenes, will be a sorry piece of work, and in the wrong direction. Hermogenes That, Socrates, I can quite believe. Socrates Well, but do you suppose that you will be able to analyse them in this way? for I am certain that I should not. Hermogenes Much less am I