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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: things; and the secondary, as I conceive, derive their significance from
the primary. But then, how do the primary names indicate anything? And
let me ask another question,--If we had no faculty of speech, how should we
communicate with one another? Should we not use signs, like the deaf and
dumb? The elevation of our hands would mean lightness--heaviness would be
expressed by letting them drop. The running of any animal would be
described by a similar movement of our own frames. The body can only
express anything by imitation; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well
as the rest of the body. But this imitation of the tongue or voice is not
yet a name, because people may imitate sheep or goats without naming them.
What, then, is a name? In the first place, a name is not a musical, or,
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