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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: wrong, or that Plato, though he evidently inclines to him, had any other
aim than that of personifying, in the characters of Hermogenes, Socrates,
and Cratylus, the three theories of language which are respectively
maintained by them.
The two subordinate persons of the dialogue, Hermogenes and Cratylus, are
at the opposite poles of the argument. But after a while the disciple of
the Sophist and the follower of Heracleitus are found to be not so far
removed from one another as at first sight appeared; and both show an
inclination to accept the third view which Socrates interposes between
them. First, Hermogenes, the poor brother of the rich Callias, expounds
the doctrine that names are conventional; like the names of slaves, they
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