their first names, and that the names which were thus 
     given are necessarily their true names.

This view of Cratylus was the basis of most language study 
until the Renaissance. It is rooted in the old oral “magic” of the 
“momentary deity” kind such as is favored again today for 
various reasons. That it is most alien to merely literary and 
visual culture is easily found in the remarks of incredulity which 
Jowett supplies as his contribution to the dialogue.

     Carothers turns to David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd  (p. 
9) for further orientation in his queries concerning the effects 
of writing on nonliterate communities. Riesman had 
characterized our own Western world as developing in its 
“typical members a social character whose conformity is 
insured by their tendency to acquire early in life an internalized